Unnatural Causes
by S-Jay494
Summary: Casefic. A hunt lands Sam and Dean on the New England coast to investigate a violent death that occurred behind locked doors, but will Dean's past end up hunting him instead? [Set post S8 'Friends with Benefits'] Contains: Sam/Dean/Garth
1. Chapter 1

Title: Unnatural Causes

Notes: This is the sequel to "The Price of Happiness." Not necessary to read that one to understand this one, but it gets referenced a few times. Hope you enjoy. Reviews are appreciated.

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**oOoOoOo**

_Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard_

Ana Crawford clawed her way up the shaking stairs from the basement. The whole house seemed to quake as though both the earth shook and the heavens were raining down. Her scream was caught in her throat as she gasped for breath, her side searing with pain as she pressed her hand there. She felt the hot, ooze from her insides spill through her fingers as she stumbled onto her kitchen floor. She dragged herself, the blood gushing from her wounds, making sliding easier but weakening her limbs. The phone was just yards away. The retired lawyer knew if she could just dial those three numbers, someone would come. They might not find her alive, but they would find her. With a little looking, they would also find the journal she hid—the one with her outrageous discovery and her shameful confession about what she had done.

Pawing the wood floor—the very planks she paid thousands of dollars to have restored in the last year—she splashed puddles of red on the shiny surface as she reached for the cord to tug the land line toward her. It tumbled from its perch and crashed to the floor nearly striking her in the face, but a last moment flinch saved her nose and teeth from the impact. Her fingers pressed the first two numbers, but before she could strike the last digit, the voice, a cold and hissing sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard accompanied by a putrid scent of death, filled the air making Ana freeze.

"Where is it?" it hissed.

"What?" Ana whimpered as her vision darkened and she grew cold. She never received an answer to her question as the invisible claws, the ones that carved into her in the basement, took one final swipe.

The phone beeped frantically as the call was left uncompleted as a bright arc of red spattered the freshly painted wainscoting of the remodeled kitchen. Ana remained on the floor as her heart beat its last, surrounded by the spray of her own blood with her eyes frozen open in fright.

**oOoOoOo**

The road rolled out like a long, unfurled ribbon. Sam sat in the passenger seat of the Impala listening to his brother sing along with the radio. The early spring sun was hovering in its last rays before beginning its descent for the evening. The sky was turning a soft, powder gray and the hints of chilly but fresh air from the new season flitted through the car. Sam took a deep breath and stretched his neck in the passenger seat after a long day of spent creeping along secondary roads following detours as the New England road crews began repairing the blacktop following a harsh winter. The pavement grew smoother and the air warmer and more invigorating the closer they drew to the Massachusetts coast.

Despite the road delays on this trip, things were good. Strangely good. The kind of good that made the younger Winchester ache because there weren't enough days like this and they usually ended too soon. The Winchesters had had a rough time the last few months, but for the moment Sam felt like counting his blessings for the last year wasn't such a bad idea.

First and top of the list: His brother was alive.

This realization was punctuated with a pang of lingering sadness as he turned his head to watch Dean piloting the black car, moving his lips as he sang along with Metallica's '_Unforgiven_.' Sam pushed the irony of that from his mind, reminding himself that he was focusing on positive things for this list.

While Dean's return to Sam's life had come with its share of stress, anger, angst and trouble—what in Winchester's existence didn't-but what mattered most was that Sam's big brother was back and relatively whole again. Purgatory had leeched a lot of the emotional poison out of him and fortified his brother, shoring up the many and disastrous cracks that appeared the year the Leviathans invaded and Bobby was taken from them. Granted, Dean would always be damaged and (if left to his own choices and devices) would throw his life away because he didn't think it was worth much. But, the main point here remained valid: Despite the few speed bumps in their relationship during the last year, Sam was immeasurably glad Dean was back.

Yes, Sam had been pissed at his brother about his selective reporting regarding his escape from Purgatory; yes, Sam was pissed Dean turned to Benny the Fang for help; and yes, Dean still deserved a serious beat down for that stunt he pulled with the fake text message from Amelia that send Sam into a tailspin of worry and fury over her safety.

Still, that didn't change the important thing: Dean was alive.

Sam harbored an ocean of guilt over not looking for his brother when he disappeared after ganking Dick Roman, but from what Sam now knew about where Dean spent the previous year, searching wouldn't have changed anything… at least in the category of things that would have helped Dean escape monster land. The real damage was not Dean's stay in Purgatory but Sam's betrayal of not even looking. For Dean, a man who could see the value in any person's existence except his own, Sam not looking for him reinforced what the dark voices in his head told him: He wasn't worthy of anyone caring for him and the world was better off without him. In retrospect,Sam knew that even a little effort in looking for his big brother would have made his reunion with Dean go smoother. Dean had been hurt, possibly worse than any physical pain he ever sustained before (which truly was saying something), by Sam's admission that he didn't bother looking for his brother but instead quit hunting altogether once Dean vanished. The look of betrayal in Dean's eyes cut into Sam's heart as deeply as any dagger could. There was no making up for it, Sam knew. That was guilt he would need to carry forever.

But, at the moment, the wounds smarting between them appeared mostly healed, or at least no longer hemorrhaging.

They'd had their say, their nasty words, their physical blows—the typical Winchester protracted therapy session, if you will. Now, there was a calm in the storm that sometimes raged between them. At the moment, the winds were light and mild and the skies were clear. They were getting along, they were together, and they had a ghost hunt awaiting them at the end of this drive. A good old-fashion Winchester road trip.

Sure, there was the ominous, looming goal of closing the gates of hell forever on the horizon and the slow work of Kevin Tran, the prophet who hopefully could hand them the instructions on how to do just that. Over all, it didn't look like a good long-range forecast, but at the moment things were nearly fine. On this day, the big bad hadn't rear its ugly head. The Winchesters were coming off a few minor cases that ended up with no addition victims; no time in jail for either of them and (thankfully) not a single fight or death between them. They hadn't even had so much as a cross word toward each other in two weeks—not even the typical pointless spats that sometimes erupted due to very little sleep and too much time in close proximity to each other.

"Is this actually happening?" Sam asked suddenly.

"What?" Dean asked, looking at his brother with a quizzical expression.

"This," Sam nodded and twisted in his seat to look at Dean with a content but mildly uncertain smile on his face. "I'm just checking on whether I'm dreaming."

"You dream about riding around in the car with me?" Dean asked. "Dude, your dreams suck. At least put a chick in the car if you're going to dream about a road trip—oh, and when you do, make sure I am not anywhere near it. And get your own car. Baby only gets to appear in my dreams."

"I don't need a woman in my dreams, and I don't want your car," Sam said.

"I so do not understand any of that," Dean muttered as he shook his head disappointedly.

"No, Dean," Sam scoffed and chuckled. "I mean, we're having a good day. We've had a few of them lately, actually."

"We have?" Dean looked at him oddly. "Like when I got my head bashed in by that crazy spirit in Vermont and woke up in the past? Or the week before that when I found you unconscious on the floor of that warehouse in Oklahoma, like an inch from a cursed object that could have killed you? Those 'good' days? Or are you referring to the fact we took our time getting from Vermont to Cape Cod so you could go antiquing?"

Sam scowled at the accusation.

"It was one store that had books from an old estate; one of them might help out Kevin in deciphering the riddles the trials seem to come wrapped in," Sam sighed forcefully, trying to push all thoughts of the prophet out of his mind. "And I seem to recall you liking the Civil War sword collection there and spending a lot of time fondling the merchandise."

"Blades, dude," Dean grinned, sidestepping the slight with ease. "You know, one of those might have killed some guy whose spirit we tangled with in the Carolinas or Virginia before. Ever think about that? That's history."

"And you think history is cyclical?" Sam wondered and looked at his brothers scrunched brow. "You think it repeats itself naturally?"

"Might be cool if it did," Dean nodded. "I would so be getting a dinosaur."

"A dinosaur?" Sam gaped. "What are you, five?"

"Think about it," Dean insisted. "Our own T-Rex, Sammy. That would have been fun to chase the Leviathan, huh?"

Sam raised his eyebrows as he watched Dean's head bobbing eagerly while grinning. The younger Winchester carded his hand through his long hair as he shook his head in reply. Sam couldn't help but grin at the insanity and sincerity in Dean's voice, words and expression. His older brother might frustrate him and confuse the hell out of him with his sometimes overly linear (and, at other times, dangerously less than linear) thought patterns, but Sam could not undervalue the wealth of entertainment and comfort Dean could provide when he was simply rambling because he was in a good mood. It belied the intelligence he worked so hard to hide and the child in him that never got a chance to be a kid. Those light and carefree moments had been rare over the last several years and Sam had learned not to squander them.

And that, the younger Winchester reminded himself, was the point of this discussion.

"I meant that, despite everything going on, things haven't been too bad lately," Sam said. "It's been a long time since I could say that and actually believe it was true."

"A few good days and you think you're dreaming?" Dean nodded accepting the explanation. "Yeah, generally, our lives do suck way more than this. Don't worry, little brother, something's sure to go wrong soon. Good thing I don't have my dinosaur yet. He'd probably turn and eat me right now after hearing an opening like that."

Sam chuckled again at the wonton lunacy of it all and was about to remark as much when in that instant, the hard driving licks of AC/DC's "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" sounded in the car signaling Dean's cell phone was ringing. Both brothers looked at each other for a worried moment until Dean shook his head ruefully, a shadow of worry washing over his features. The accusing glare Sam received from his brother growled: _You just jinxed us, didn't you?_ Shaking his head, Dean grabbed his phone.

"Little arms like that, T-Rex probably can't dial and hold the phone to his ear himself, right?" Dean grimaced before he answered. Sam rolled his eyes as Dean flipped open his cell and answered the call. "Yeah?"

"Dean?" the crisped and clipped voice sounded strained yet familiar.

"Carl?" Dean asked recognizing the voice of the man who had summoned them from their Vermont excursion.

Carl Whitney was a cop, something the Winchesters avoided normally out of professional need and courtesy. Whitney, however, was a rarity in their experience. He was a cop who understood the need to put the law in the trunk of your car and fight fire with… well, salt and more fire, a little iron and some holy water when necessary. The man wasn't a hunter, but he had helped the elder Winchester brother on a case many years earlier and never forgot the lessons learned or the favors owed. He said as much to Dean as he apologized for needing is help.

"I was worried you maybe didn't get my message," Carl replied. "You're a hard man to track down, Dean."

"Well, it's best if I keep it that way, you know," Dean replied. "My brother and I are heading your way now. We're just passing Buzzard Bay… the things you New Englander's choose for names…"

"So you're close," Carl said sounding relieved. "Thank god."

"Frankly, I wouldn't bother, but to each his own," Dean scowled for a moment. "We figured we'd blow into town, do a little recon and catch up with you after that. Your message didn't have a lot of detail, but we did a little research. This is about the death at that inn, right?"

"You got it," the man heaved a sigh of relief. "Man, what a mess."

"Well, our ETA will be about 7 tonight if we catch the last ferry," Dean explained. "Any tips on where we can crash without drawing any attention?"

"It's the off-season still so anyone visiting sort of stands out, if only because the merchants are looking for customers so they're trolling for new faces," Carl said. "Never mind the ferry; I'll get you out here on private transport."

"No planes or helicopters," Dean said quickly.

"It's a boat, Dean, take a chill," Carl laughed. "I'm a police chief on an island of millionaires, not a millionaire myself. Just leave your car on the main land. The parking lot at Woods Hole is safe; my cousin oversees it. I'll have him take special care of your car—you still driving that black Impala?"

"Damn right," Dean smiled and lovingly caressed the dashboard. Sam watched the motion and rolled his eyes.

"Seriously, one day you two should just get a room," Sam muttered and watched the small town landscape slide by. Dean sneered and gave him the finger as he continued to listen to the call.

"I'll heading out in my boat now," Carl said. "That way avoid the security at the ferry docks. I don't want to have to erase anymore security footage than I have to."

"All right," Dean said. "You'll give us the full details when we see you?"

"As much as I know," Carl said. "Which isn't much. We got a vicious murder without any real suspects and no way for the bad guy to have gotten in or left the scene. The whole thing feels off to me."

"Off is our specialty," Dean promised. "We'll see if we can sort it out. See you in a few."

He then disconnected and gazed pensively at Sam.

"So do you think my T-Rex could swim to Martha's Vineyard?" he asked in a serious tone.

**oOoOoOo**

After getting the Impala a prime space that could be watched by the lot manager, who conveniently lived above the office for the parking business, the Winchesters set about unpacking the items they would need from the trunk.

Night was falling fast and the sharp breeze off the Atlantic inlet was whistling around them. Despite the chilly temperature, Sam inhaled the sea air and felt it soak into him like a powerful medicine. It gave him opposing feelings that felt miraculous: It excited him and made him feel sleepy. Sea air always did that to him. There was something powerful and yet relaxing about spending time near the ocean. While most people preferred the sultry climate of the tropics, Sam actually preferred the sharper temperatures of more northern spots. And, while Dean would deny it for the lack of visible bikini's and thongs on the women year-round, Sam knew his brother actually preferred the slower and more naturally wild coast of New England to that of Florida. The upper reaches of Maine were actually Dean's preferred locale on this side of the country, but this trek was bringing them instead to Martha's Vineyard. And while this case was one he pushed for them to follow, from his sudden quiet and more tense posture, it was evident this was not his preferred element.

Sensing the shift in his mood, Sam began trying to fill in the many gaps that still existed for why they were here and who they would be assisting.

"So you and Carl worked together before?" Sam asked as they exited the car and began hauling their duffles out of the trunk.

They were extra heavy as there was a larger compliment of weapons and supplies in them. Neither liked the idea of leaving the car and it's ample provisions behind as they prepared to walk toward the small, white clapboard station. Sam once remarked on the Impala's trunk's value, referring to it s as a Mary Poppins bag of supernatural survival gear. Dean's terse 30 minute diatribe about Sam's disturbing fondness for musicals and questions about his sexuality or possible actual gender followed. His point, though, was proven in this instance. The trunk had everything they needed, but the car could not go with them. The island wasn't precisely small, but the car would surely stand out so a low profile while driving it would be impossible. Also, if they needed to make a quick getaway, there was no way Dean would leave his baby behind.

"Yeah," Dean answered plainly. "Carl Whitney."

Sam watched as his brother caressed the trunk just after closing it. He seemed to mutter a few words, possibly an apology or a promise, to the vehicle. Sam said nothing. He learned long ago not to be mock Dean's car too much and not to be jealous of the car. Dean loved both the car and his brother (and Sam was reasonably certain on most days that Dean loved his little brother slightly more than the Chevy).

"If you've finished your goodbye to your mistress, I think I see you friend," Sam said, gesturing to a tall, bulky man approaching them wearing heavy Wellington boots and a bright slicker-style jacket. The man raised a beefy hand and waved.

"Yeah, that's him," Dean waved in return. "Put on a few pounds since the last time I saw him."

"Well, you've died a few times since then so people do change," Sam quipped, expecting a chiding laugh but receiving none. Dean only cut his eyes at him briefly then returned his gaze to the ground.

Sam chewed his lip, wondering why there was this sudden chill between them. Dean had grown quiet the closer they drew to the ferry landing at Woods Hole and virtually stopped talking as soon as they parked.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

"Fine," Dean said but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was his brother.

Sam stared at him with concern. Dean was now wearing no readable expression on his face. This could be taken in several ways: He was still feeling the effects of the mild concussion he received in Vermont several days earlier; he was pissed at Sam for his flip remark about dying so often; or there was something he was holding back about either this case or his 'friend.' Sam's money was on the last one, but did not want to start rocking the boat—especially since they were going to be clambering into an actual boat in several minutes to get a ride to the island.

"So you know him from when you were hunting on your own while I was at school?" Sam asked carefully.

The brothers never discussed those days. For the first year or two after leaving Stanford, the topic raised Sam's hackles and made Dean moody and defensive. Since then, a Hoover Dam sized load of other crap had flowed under, around and over their bridge so the younger Winchester doubted it was a taboo subject any longer.

"Yeah," Dean said, falling into his predictable minimalist approach to historical details.

"And he's a cop?" Sam prodded as they trudged forward.

Dean nodded once. Sam paused, hoping for but realizing there was no more elaborate answer in the offing.

"He knows who and what you really are?" Sam dug deeper. "He doesn't think you're FBI or something?"

"He knows the truth," Dean said firmly. "Real name. Real job. He knows all about us, Sam."

"Us?" Sam questioned.

"Hunters," Dean growled then picked up his pace, leaving his little brother behind as he approached and greeted the law enforcement officer like he was a long, lost college frat buddy.

Carl Whitney was approaching his 50 if the lines on his face were any indication. His voice as deep and resonating. He was easily 30 pounds overweight but his height helped him hold it well. He was an inch taller than Dean and two shorter than Sam. His face was ruddy and told the tale of many sunburns and lots of cold harsh winters. His eyes were a fading brown, like his receding hair.

"Man, you are a sight for sore eyes," Whitney said wearily as he reached forward and warmly pumped Dean's hand, clapping him soundly on the shoulder. "You look good, kid. Damn good!"

"I'm flattered, but I don't swing that way," Dean shrugged. "Been hitting the jelly donuts, I see."

Carl loosed a loud, barking laugh for a moment then his expression changed. It was suddenly full of a deep and sincere concern as he gazed back.

"I don't have to chase the bad guys anymore," Carl said. "I take complaints about parking tickets and noise levels. Basically, I am retired while on duty. Nice work if you can get it."

"I can only imagine," Dean scoffed and shook his head.

"I know, kid," Carl said solemnly as he nodded briefly, acknowledging Sam's approach. "Glad you're still with us. I was worried, you know, after… everything a year or two ago."

"Everything?" Sam wondered, entering the discussion.

"Carl," Dean said turning to his brother, "this is Sam, my little brother."

"Little?" he smirked. "You still have a gift for understatement, Dean. Wait, so you mean to tell me that you have a brother? All that time we worked together and I never heard you never mention him."

Sam shot him a cold look and watched as Dean shook his head and winced. Dean waved his hand, pushing through the conversation.

"You said after everything?" Sam inquired. "What's '_everything_'?"

Sam decided, with a very conscious effort, to look for details about Dean's past in another way rather than delve into why his brother didn't want someone in his past to know he had a younger brother. Sam figured it had a lot to do with the fact Sam turned his back on his family when he went to Stanford. He now knew, after so many years of getting to know his brother as an adult, how much Sam leaving his brother hurt the elder Winchester. Dean's discomfort at Carl's words was obvious, but Sam pushed that aside. Rather than tread upon that apparent sore spot, Sam opted to seek information about the case that brought the two men together while Sam was pursuing his academic career.

"I meant those things, those… whatever they were posing as you that went on that killing spree," Carl said.

"Those things?" Sam repeated. "Leviathan?"

"Yeah, but don't say that word around me," Carl shuddered visibly. "Give me the fucking willies just thinking about them. Oh, in case you needed to know…"

He pulled a sports bottle out of his long, jacket pocket and dumped it over his hands then did the same quickly (and without warning) to both brothers. They blinked in surprise but said nothing.

"Borax," Carl nodded and wiped his hands on his pants. "Figured I should check and so should you."

"Better than a secret handshake," Dean said, brushing his hands on his coat. "Where's your boat? Tell me it's not some friggin' dingy that we have to row."

As it turned out, it was not a dingy. It was a modest 12-foot whaler with an actual engine. It sped them across the sound from the mainland out to the island six miles away. The sea was choppy and steel gray, throwing a fine mist over them with each thump of the uneven surface. Sam gripped the side of the boat tight and kept his eyes glued to the life jackets resting unused on the side of the vessel. He felt pale and worried about launching his late lunch into the Atlantic. He was only partially relieved when he noted the green tinge to his brother's coloring (just a shade lighter than his eyes) as Dean stood, grasping the edge of the wind screen for dear life with his eyes locked like a laser on the land in front of them.

They arrived at a marina in Oak Bluffs and lugged their gear on rubbery knees to Carl's waiting pickup truck. The feeble heat from the vehicle did nothing to vanquish their chill and jitters as they headed out of the main part of town toward the more sparsely developed area in the 25 mile stretch of land. They eventually arrived at a small, weather-worn but durable cottage covered in graying cedar shingles with a stand of cedars surrounding it, giving it cover from the wind and prying eyes.

They hauled their bags inside and were pointed to the back deck by Carl. Sam was hoping to remain inside for some warmth from the evening chill, but shuffled after his brother to be a good guest. His worries of freezing, he realized quickly, were unfounded. Using nearly as much lighter fluid as Dean would to toast a set of troublesome bones, Carl ignited a large, stone fire pit embedded in the center of his back deck that threw a welcoming wall of heat at them. Sam dropped into a nearby Adirondack chair and felt the warm worm its way into his damp jeans and onto his clammy skin soothing it. From the relaxed expression of Dean, who sat on the other side of the blaze with his head tipped back in a euphoric expression probably only his lady companions ever got a chance to see, he too was enjoying these accommodations.

"Carl, just so you know, if this fire never goes out we may never leave," Dean offered, his eyes still closed as the warmth rolled over him.

Sam smirked and shook his head. Dean did not get attached to locations—a hazard of never living anywhere long enough to do so. Yes, he had a comfort zone at Bobby's at one time, but that was gone along with the man who called the Salvage Yard home. Sam knew his brother was growing very fond of their bunker in Kansas, but Dean was cautious and still did not call it _home_. Actually, home was not a word Dean used except when referring (always grudgingly) to the house in Lawrence, Kansas . Home, in the classical sense, did not exist for the Winchesters. That Dean was showing signs of being relaxed while they were on a job was just more proof, as far as Sam was concerned, that things were going well for them. He hoped, in part for his own sake and sanity, that this was a sign maybe this time their attempt to save the world would actually work out.

"Let me sweeten the pot," Carl said, handing both long neck bottles of some micro brew Sam did not recognize but accepted gratefully. "I ordered pizza before I left. Delivery kid should be here any minute with it."

"Carl, will you marry Sam?" Dean asked and chuckled.

Sam sighed and shook his head, not rising to the bait, and focusing instead getting to know their host as it seemed Dean was going to turn mute again.

"So Carl," Sam began. "You know about the Leviathan?"

Dean remained still, head tipped back, eyes closed. If Sam did not know his brother's sleeping expressions better, he would have sworn Dean had slipped into dream land. However, the lack of twitching and terror strained expressions validated he was simply resting in the chair, communing with the welcoming caresses from the fire.

"Yeah," Carl nodded and looked darkly toward blaze. "Saw what those vicious fuckers could do. Knew I had to help you guys—after crazy old Frank said it wasn't you doing all that shooting and whatnot. Of course, he also said there was a chance that the you he knew wasn't you either. Fucked up world we live in."

He pulled deeply on his bottle. In solidarity, Dean raised his bottle slightly and tilted it toward the man. His eyes remained closed, leaving Sam to his research. That Dean did not seem surprised at the man's knowledge angered Sam. He reminded himself they were allegedly in a good patch and did his best to tamp out the budding embers of frustration with his brother.

"Frank?" Sam repeated. "Frank who?"

"Frank Devereaux," Dean replied, surprising Sam by uttering a word, though he was still inspecting the insides of his eyelids. "Carl here helped a bit with the whole taking us off the grid deal."

"He did?" Sam gaped at his brother then turned to Carl. "You did? Why? I mean how? And why am I just hearing about it now?"

"There was a lot going on at the time," Dean shrugged. "I guess I forgot to mention it. Wasn't my best year, Sammy, remember? Besides, it wasn't important how it got done as long as it did."

"Yeah, I think that makes us even for New Orleans, by the way, Dean," Carl nodded. "I'm a cop and could have ended up in some serious shit when you told Frank to have someone helped with the boots on the ground approach to making your records disappear. Thank you for giving him my name on that."

"All's fair in annihilation and war," Dean shrugged. Carl scowled then smirked and nodded.

"You're lucky I like you," Carl chuckled and shook his head.

"You're lucky I'm a good shot," Dean murmured.

"Amen," the police chief sighed and nodded as he tossed a gratitude filled look at Dean, who remained oblivious to it as he continued to inspect the insides of his eyelids quietly. The two men fell silent, leaving only the crackle of the fire to fill the air.

"So you worked with Frank," Sam prompted.

The blaze spat small sparks at them that died before reaching their legs. The skies were slowly clearing to reveal a pock-marked heaven of feeble stars. The wind picked up a bit, but the blaze kept them plenty war. Carl stoked the fire with a long, iron rod then sighed.

"Yeah, met him a few years ago when I was tracking a fugitive through Indiana," Carl replied then winced as he hung his head.

Dean suddenly laughed, his loud, barking guffaw and began to rattle off sentences that took Sam a minute to place.

"_Alright, listen up, people_," Dean said, grinning manically as he recited, still with his eyes closed. "_Our fugitive has been on the run for 90 minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is 4 miles-per-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, hen house, outhouse and doghouse in that area_." He paused and finally pried open his eyes to look up at his two companions. "I love that guy."

"I hate when you do that," Carl scowled, flinging his bottle cap at Dean, who barely moved his head out of the way to avoid being struck by the projectile. "Scariest moment of my life, seeing a goddamn zombie crawl out of a grave, and I'm nearly shitting my pants all the while numb nuts here," he said jerking his thumb toward Dean, 'is sitting beside me quoting Tommy Lee Jones from 'The Fugitive' the whole time. I nearly shot you that day, Dean. Hell, I probably should have. Jackass."

Dean shrugged and grinned. It was not an apology or a acquiescence of understanding. Sam looked at Carl with continuing confusion over his history and turned his eyes away from Dean, who was at least keeping his eyes open now as if he wanted to participate in the discussion.

"I used to be a U.S. Marshal," Carl explained. "That's how I met your brother. I was sent to New Orleans for work and…well, we worked on some shit. Anyway, back to Frank. So, years later, I was looking for this fugitive in the mid-west and a contact of a contact, sort of thing, led me to Frank for assistance. He helped me dig up the guy's new ID and do a bunch of crap I knew our tech weenies can't do because of laws and red tape. I just needed to find the guy and bring him in. Didn't matter how I got the info, as long as I got it. Frank came through. Bat shit crazy as he was, he could find anything that ever came near a computer."

Dean nodded solemnly and took a slow pull on his beer. A faraway look appeared in his eyes that Sam recognized. Devereaux's death was just one of many that he knew his brother carried with him. It didn't matter how much Sam told Dean that it was the Leviathans who killed their crazed co-conspirator in putting down the evil chompers, the weight of the man's death was another load of guilt Dean chose shoulder.

"Frank helped you?" Sam questioned. "You're the law. Frank didn't trust the law."

"You're right, he didn't," Carl nodded. "But he needed contacts, too. So our mutual belief that the other was crazy and getting ready to screw him over was a bonding experience, you might say. Anyway, when he was doing did a little clean up for you both, he asked for my help in getting hands on some physical evidence after he burned the electronic records. Well, once I heard the name Dean Winchester, I figured it was fate telling me to pay a debt so…"

"You helped with that?" Sam asked, his tone less aggressive.

"Hey, your brother saved my ass and let me know I wasn't going crazy," Carl said passionately. "A little strategic B&E and destruction of public property for the good guys was the least I could do. Once I was done with that, I hung up my spurs as a Fed and came back here to my hometown to take up the job of Police Chief until I retire."

Dean nodded his thanks to the man for his extracurricular efforts.

"You're the one who destroyed our paper arrest records while Frank burned the electronic ones and all that evidence like the video and our prints and photos," Sam surmised. "Wow. Okay, I am indebted to you, too. Thank you."

"Did more than that," Carl winked. "Wiped out evidence that either of you were ever born. The security on the hall of records in Lawrence, Kansas is a joke by the way. Mid-westerners may like their firearms, but they don't know shit about protection."

"You destroyed our birth certificates?" Sam asked, unsure why he was so disappointed and shocked.

It was not like he could ever use it or his real identity in any official capacity again. Still, Sam held a spark of hope in his chest that maybe, just maybe, if he passed all three trials, he might be able to have that normal life he dreamed about for so long. Not that the destruction of his birth record was a serious impediment to that. He was more than capable of creating an identity through fraud documents. It just felt odd knowing that, as far as official records were concerned, he did not exist and never had.

"Everything on paper for an official civil record containing your names is no longer," Carl nodded.

Dean, as if sensing his brother's pondering and distress, found his voice and rejoined the discussion.

"So give us the basics on this case of yours?" Dean asked pointedly changing the subject.

"Creep show is more like it," Carl shook his head and shuddered. "House was locked down tight from the inside and the guy people suspect was seen roughly around the time of the murder on the other side of town on a security camera. I'm thinking it's a ghost."

Sam and Dean exchanged looks. The man spoke calmly. Even for someone who wasn't completely unaware that the supernatural was real, it seemed odd that he would throw out the possibility of a spirit so casually. Carl caught their looks and shrugged.

"Look, I've been… researching things since Dean and I worked together," he admitted. "I just wanted to know what else might be out there in the dark, you know? Usually, there's nothing here on the Vineyard other than what it exactly seems, but this… I knew pretty quick this was not normal. I didn't know what to do so I tracked you down, Dean. Look, I don't want to run in the only suspect just because it's easy, and I sure don't want to let whatever killed that woman just… be left alone. Dean, you showed me things that opened my eyes. It's like you said: You can't un-see what you've seen. Well, I ain't seen whatever this is yet myself, but this is… something—your kind of something."

"You got the file?" Dean asked Carl quickly. All humor and warmth from his movie quotes gone from his voice. "We've got work to do."

The chilling and sudden shift into hunter mode even startled Sam.

**oOoOoOo**


	2. Chapter 2

**oOoOoOo**

Sam woke in the morning with the same aches he felt each morning since the first trial. It was like battling the final dregs of a bad flu… with a side of mild tuberculosis. He was glad for the separate sleeping accommodations at Carl's house. There were two bedrooms on the second floor and one first. Dean opted for the guest room downstairs without consulting Sam. He had just gone there with his bag and half of the information on the case after they divided up the file Carl gave them the night before.

Carl shook his head, as if he was unsurprised by Dean's lack of manners and sudden desire to be alone. Sam chalked that up to a long day of driving following a few difficult days in northern Vermont spent recovering from a case that did not go as they planned. But, as no one was killed on that one, Sam felt he was safe in putting it in the win column. Dean, too, had been pleased they put that restless spirit down, but his sporadic imitation of a mute was causing Sam concern.

Dean normally liked straightforward hunts. They didn't get to tangle with the normal variety of monsters and ghosts as much any longer; there were always bigger and more dangerous creatures in their path it seemed. Dean's jokes about being a special team for the varsity squad was accurate but did not seem funny any longer.

Once Sam finished his morning routine of trying hard not to hack up a lung while gaining his balance and clearing the major cobwebs from his head, he dressed and descended the stairs. Dean was sitting at the table in the kitchen with his half of the case file spread out in front of him. There was a coffee mug by his hand and, from the incessant tapping of his foot on the floor, Sam knew this was not his first cup of the morning.

"Did you sleep?" Sam asked as Dean briefly flicked his eyes upward to greet his brother. The dark circles under Dean's eyes were a telltale sign of the negative.

"Yeah," he said quickly and looked down again.

"Missing your bed?" Sam smirked.

Dean eyed him harshly for a moment and muttered a firm 'shut up' as he continued to look at the case file.

"How 'bout you?" Dean asked. "You get any sleep? I know the answer is yes because I could hear you sawing logs from downstairs, but do you actual feel rested?"

"Yeah, I kind of do," Sam yawned. "I was out like a light… I don't know what maybe 10 minutes after my head hit the pillow."

"You and the friggin' ocean," Dean shook his head. "I always thought we should get you a recording of the inside of seashell when you were little. Put you to sleep every time."

Sam smirked and nodded. It had been Dean's job to put his brother to bed for many years. Sam could barely recall instances of his father doing that, but the memories of Dean (and the countless times Sam begged for just a few more minutes) doing the job were plentiful. For a child with no training and too drastically young for the job, Dean had been a pretty good parent to his little brother about those kind of things. Sam figured a recording of the ocean might have made Dean's job easier back then. The sound and smell of the sea had always been an instant drug for Sam. Although, if he was being fully honest, even though he slept he still felt weary. He ached, and there was a sluggishness in his muscles that puzzled him. He had not done much of anything recently to cause it. He knew, in the back of his mind, that it was caused by whatever the first trial did to him, but he wasn't going to complain or worry about it much yet. Dean was hovering like a worried mother often enough already. Instead, Sam felt it would be more productive to focus on the present, which involved a dead woman and an old house. But first, he was not going to give up on a chance to further his brother's apparently light mood. He was the one who raised a childhood memory, so Sam felt justified in discussing.

"Remember when you found me that shell that I kept by my bed?" Sam asked, digging back into a half-forgotten memory. "The one I tried to keep on my pillow, where were we then?"

Dean paused and squinted his eyes for a moment. He nodded then replied.

"Wrights Beach, North Carolina," he recalled. "During Hurricane Emily back in '93."

Sam nodded, recalling the storm that hit further up the coast but cleared out the seaside town of all but the diehard residents and a family of hunters in the region to deal with a haunting surrounding several deaths involved with a charter boat company. While John Winchester set off to deal with the remains of the spirit, 14-year-old Dean was left with his 10-year-old brother and an entire, nearly empty coastline. They spent the last days of "official" summer playing in the churning surf and combing the beach for buried treasure. All they ended up with was the nearly, perfectly in-tact conch shell Dean gave Sam as a belated birthday gift so the little boy could hear the ocean even when they traveled far inland for the next case. It was crush in the trunk by their father a few weeks later when he dropped a cache of weapons on it without realizing it was there.

"I nearly cut my ear off rolling on it," Sam recalled and unconsciously rubbed the spot that got sliced by the sharp edge of the shell.

Dean merely nodded. Sam expected a joke or a jab about needing to sew his ear back on or fiddler crabs attacking after dark, but none were apparently forthcoming. Sam chewed his lip for a moment and regarded his brother with renewed concern.

"Okay, what's bugging you?" Sam asked, rising to get his own coffee, finding it odd Dean did not offer to do so.

Lately, he was adamant Sam was not allowed to do most anything for himself. Meals, laundry, even running errands of any kind were solely within Dean's purview and Sam was forbidden to even attempt to try any of them.

"Nothing," Dean said without looking up. "I'm reading."

"I can see that," Sam replied, pulling some pages away from him. "You in some rush to solve this case this morning?"

"Well, one person is dead so I thought it might be nice if we solved it before the body count ratchets up any more," Dean said sternly, plucking the pages out of Sam's grip.

"I'm just asking because you're all over the map right now, dude," Sam replied. "You were excited to get Carl's call and then we arrive and suddenly you go all quiet. Now, you're mainlining caffeine apparently so you can work on overdrive. What am I missing?"

Dean sighed and looked at his brother with a muddled expression. The dark smudges under his eyes were prominent and made his pale skin look even lighter. The joke about missing his bed had only been meant half in jest. Sam knew Dean had adjusted to life in their underground bunker. There was routine and security on the place. It was also pristine compared to most other places they had laid their heads at night over the last decade. For someone who only kept his weapons clean and organized on the road, Dean's room in Kansas was immaculate and had an odd Zen appeal to it, if you could feel relaxed with deadly weapons on the walls.

"You don't feel like this place, the island I mean, is…," Dean shrugged then fell quiet again.

"What?" Sam asked, sipping the hot, black liquid and feeling it scald his tongue and throat like lava.

"Nothing," Dean shook his head. "Just me I guess."

Sam stared at him for a long moment and saw an agitation he had not seen in Dean's eyes for many months, since he first returned from Purgatory in fact. He had come back from monster land with more than a few symptoms of post traumatic stress. There was once or twice during tense moments and interrogations that Sam wondered if Dean realized he was back in the world and not in the hell-adjacent real estate where he spent a year running and fighting for his life along-side a vampire and battered angel.

Seeing that same edginess worried Sam. He wondered if something in this case was dredging up those memories for Dean again. More worrisome than that, he wondered if his brother was even aware that might be happening.

"Maybe it's just the whole island thing," Dean said. "Had to leave the car behind. Can't get back without a boat. It's too… confining."

Sam nodded, wondering if that was the issue. Like Purgatory, the island was a sort of jail to someone used to the freedom of roaming the back roads of the nation. There was no quick stretch of asphalt to hop on to get away. While Dean was never one to run away, Sam thought that perhaps a little away time was what he needed. Not that he and Dean had that luxury right now. Thinking of themselves as being surrounded by miles of rough water did add a prison-like quality of restriction to this gig.

"Well, it's not that bad," Sam offered reassuringly. "The island is like 25 miles long. It's not like Gilligan's Island or anything."

"So no Ginger or Marianne?" he scoffed then growled. "This gets better every minute."

Sam snorted at the response, feeling slightly better about Dean's head space and mood in that instant as a quick flash of the mirth and lightness in Dean's personality returned and perked up his expression. It always amazed Sam, the tightrope his brother walked between the fun insanity that brought on discussions about dinosaurs as pets and the miserable kind that brought on the bouts of suicidal/kamikaze behavior. Yes, Sam knew the sarcasm in Dean's response was a deflection of the discussion, but Sam felt there was a nugget of honesty in his admission of feeling a bit claustrophobic on the island.

_Leave it to Dean to develop island fever six miles off the coast in less than 24 hours_, Sam shook his head. He did not believe that was all of his brother's problem, but it was part of the story. The rest, he hoped, would sort itself out; Sam vowed he would keep on top of the issue so that it did not become anything larger.

He also thought, guiltily (and not for the first time) that of the many things in the world he never wanted to be, Dean Winchester was one of them. Not because Sam thought his brother's life was wretched or meaningless—quite the opposite, in fact. No, Sam just knew that shouldering Dean's burdens was something he was simply not built to do. There were many difficult and taxing things that Sam could do, but he stood in awe of his older brother in many ways. The fact that Dean was still around and willing to fight the good fight made him, well, Sam's hero (not that Dean would believe it if Sam told him). Seeing the pain, the physical and even more so the emotional, was disheartening.

The universe had hammered his older brother into a dangerous weapon while seemingly robbing him of even the littlest chances at sustainable happiness. The responsibilities Dean bore since childhood were crushing, especially when you added to the treacherous mix a psyche that readily absorbed more guilt than could fill an ocean. Simply being Dean Winchester was a curse onto itself, Sam believed, which was why the younger brother had stepped up to do the trials. Dean had given enough, more than enough, of himself for a world that didn't say or show thanks and did not return kindness or affection to the compassionate and passionate man who gave his all to save strangers without giving the risks to his own life a second thought. Sam believed in a lot of things, and his brother topped that list. That was why he didn't want Dean doing the trials. Dean did not expect to live through them and had left Sam with a worry that dying was something he wanted to do anyway.

Sam wasn't ready to let that happen. He wanted Dean to live. More than that, he wanted to make his brother proud and show him there was maybe a better life for them, that all they had sacrificed was not for nothing. He wanted Dean to hope again and not simply expect that maybe the next hunt was when he punched his ticket for the last time.

So, with his lofty goal of shutting the gates of hell to end the scourge of demons on earth and the loftier goal of convincing his brother life could be a good thing, Sam refocused his thoughts on this hunt.

"Figure anything out?" Sam asked, stifling a yawn, as he looked down at the array of documents on the table.

"Well, Carl has crappy handwriting—kind of like yours," Dean scoffed. "The only suspect they had was seen across town and was caught on security camera at the time of the murder. I watched that feed. No eye flares so I'm not thinking we have shifter or a skinwalker. Guy's just an outsider so people like him for the crime. They got nothing to hold him on so let him return to Boston, but he's still officially a suspect."

Sam nodded. It was typical behavior for a heinous crime no one in a sleepy town could understand: Blame the stranger.

"Also, for an island that's had people living here for like 400 years, they really don't have a lot of ghosts and crap," Dean shook his head. "I mean, the place is surrounded by water. That really should get things juiced up and churning, shouldn't it?"

"Not if there aren't a lot of violent deaths," Sam shrugged, as he turned to the laptop. "This is like an idyllic paradise for the people who live here, Dean. They die old and happy."

"And friggin' rich," he noted. "I was reading the news clippings from the day they found the body. This guy, Walter Tibbins, was the neighbor of the victim, Ana Crawford. He discovered her body when he dropped in to see her on the way back from _quote_ getting his weekend car cleaned. His weekend car, dude. Filthy rich bastard, too, if you look at her place and realize it was the rundown house in that neck of the woods."

He tossed several photos across the table for Sam to review. It was a large home, a mansion in fact, that was in the process of a complete remodeling and overhaul. The home was 3500 square feet, three stories in height. It had a private green house and an impressive tract of land with tailored English gardens surrounding it. Crawford was not overly popular in her area as she was said to be doing the work to turn the old home into a bed and breakfast. While tourism was the life's blood of the island, the island residents preferred that it stayed in certain areas. Her place in Chilmark was not one of those.

"So are you thinking this might be a curse or witchcraft?" Sam wondered. "Payback or prevention for her turning the neighborhood into a place of business?"

"Could be," Dean shrugged. "Like Carl said last night: No evidence of a break in. No weapon found at the scene. No real finding from the coroner on what sliced and diced old Ana into cold slaw. Thinks it might be a straight razor or a box cutter, but both sound like a guess. The guy had no idea what could have done it. No fingerprints. Alarm was on and working perfectly the whole time so no one entered, and no one exited. All doors and windows were locked from the inside when police arrived. So Carl was right. This is our kind of gig."

Sam nodded and peered out the window. The wind from the night before had rolled a bank of clouds and mist into the area. A heavy, gray fog mashed its face against the windows of the house. The trees, however, appeared still. Dean followed his brother's gaze.

"Carl said it'll burn off by noon," he scoffed, his thoughts on their last dreary visit of a graveyard in similar weather. "I friggin' hate fog."

"Where is he?" Sam asked.

"Apparently, retired on duty means he still has to do rounds," Dean shrugged. "I'm guessing he's parked at a Dunkin' Donuts or whatever they've got out here. We're supposed to meet him at the police station once you're ready to go. He'll let us into the house. This might end up being an easy case. No real sneaking needed at least. Could be out of here by sunset."

Apparently, while Sam slept, Dean made the decision they would pose as insurance investigators. This would free up Carl to allow them access to any police records—apparently, the business side of dying (or the doling out of money for dying) was something people would not question in this region, but Federal officers or reporters would make people suspicious. Sam did not object to the plan, but held back his scowl and tart words for not being included in the decision. He suspected this was yet another of Dean's attempts to make life easier on Sam during the trials; however, it had the added impact of making him feel like he did when he was a child. He was supposed to be a full-fledged partner in this hunting venture now. Dean taking the lead and making all the decisions left Sam feeling angry and inferior.

Their trip to the police station was quick. The clerk at the front desk paid them little attention. Carl gave them easy directions and a set of keys along with the pass codes for the alarm systems. Dean shook his head and muttered the words 'too easy' under his breath as they returned to the car Carl loaned him. It was a two-door 2001 Mercedes-Benz CL-Class Coupe. Sam nodded appreciatively at the silver vehicle as they slid into the leather seats.

"Better than the rides we have to take some of the time," Sam offered.

He felt his brother's scowl before he turned his eyes to see it. The car grew a degree colder under Dean's narrow and unimpressed gaze.

"I'm not knocking the Impala," Sam said quickly. "You know I would never do that. I mean, this is better than all those crap vehicles we had to steal when you had to hide your car. What, Dean? This isn't too bad for a 12 year old car."

Dean scoffed as he turned over the engine. He rolled his eyes at the soft purr of the German engine, so much softer and forgettable than the throaty growl of his Baby.

"Impressive?" Dean repeated as they pulled out of the parking lot on their way to the more rural home of Ana Crawford. "Know how much a car like this cost originally? Like $95,000. A dozen years later, guess what it goes for?"

Sam shrugged. Cars were not his thing. He could drive them. He could steal them. He could change the oil in them or replace a timing belt if he was in a pinch, but the automotive gene skipped his pool. All the mechanical genius and passion in the family resided with his brother.

"About $12,000, if it's in pristine condition, which this one is not," Dean replied knowingly. "My Chevy? Her value, straight book for her condition, is closer to $20,000 and that's not even from a serious collector."

"Alright," Sam relented with a shrug. "No arguments here. The Impala is the better vehicle in every way. It was nice of Carl to loan us this one though. After all, stealing cars on a small island while you are house guests of the police chief could get a little awkward."

Dean snorted and directed the two-door luxury model out of the town toward the interior of the island. The roads were narrow and unmarked. They were also rutted and sagging in spots as the ground beneath them gave way to the squish spring thaw. As they made a final turn onto a country lane, the driveways were farther spread. Large houses sat far back from the road with a variety of evergreen hedges blocking much of them from view while a smattering of hardwoods reached toward the sky with branches just starting to blister with leaf buds.

They arrived at the gate for the Crawford dwelling. Sam was ordered out to punch in the code needed to retract the heavy, iron gates before they drove to the side portico to park the car and enter the home. The exterior remodel was impressive and caught Sam's eye instantly. The vibrant colors on all the gingerbread scroll work was eye-popping and in character with an historic restoration. Dean scoffed at the appearance and shook his head as he slung his duffle over his shoulder. He paused and opened the bag. He drew out two items and threw one instantly to Sam.

"What's this for?" Sam asked, looking at the mojo bag now in his fist.

"We don't know what's in there," Dean shook his head. "You're one trial down. Can't have something put you on the DL now."

Sam nodded, accepting that but finding it odd Dean also slipped one of the protection bags into his own pocket. Dean caught his brother's attention and scowled.

"What?" he shrugged. "I can't be careful, too? Look, we don't know what this is, and I've gotta have your back, right? Besides, I'm telling you, this place is… I don't know. Something's… off. Just.. be careful, okay?"

Sam nodded, letting the moment pass. He did not get any heebs or jeebs from the place. Of the many places they investigated horrific deaths, this one appeared to be among the most civilized. It was neat and clean and newly restored. It was also daylight on a relatively calm day. If the fog would clear, it might even turn into a beautiful one. Dean's hesitation, Sam suspected, had more to do with whatever was actually eating at the older Winchester. Sam might have been vilely gifted with psychic abilities, but he knew enough to generally trust his brother's innate spidey senses. If Dean said be wary, a little caution was advisable.

With many questions and few opportunities to get easy answers, Sam followed his brother up the steps to the home. They unlocked the heavy oak and glass door and turned off the interior alarm. What greeted them was a long, center hallway, a sweeping mahogany staircase with open banister and a very silent home.

The pronounced hush caught Sam off guard. Outside, the sounds of spring abounded. The first chirps of returning birds, the far off sound of cars passing on the main road, and the general hum of nature warming up for the coming season. Inside, it was as if everything simply stopped.

It was not oppressively cold, but there was a certain chill to the air. As if reading Sam's mind, Dean pulled out his EMF meter and began moving forward while Sam scanned the area for anything that might be helpful.

"Alright, this thing is quiet so far," Dean said in a quiet voice as they moved forward. "What can you tell me about the woman who died here?"

Sam followed his brother, taking in the construction and décor of the home as he did.

"The deceased owner Ana Crawford, was the widow of Michael Crawford since 1998," Sam explained as they made their way down the central hallway and peered into the small rooms, sectioned off by pocket doors, on the first floor. "She lived alone in her…"

"Friggin' dollhouse," Dean muttered, rolling his eyes at yet another room over filled with highly ornate, fussy furniture, Tiffany lamps and disastrous knock offs of Impressionist art in gaudy, scrolling gilt frames.

"It's a classic Victorian mansion, or more accurately, a Victorian Gothic or Neo-Gothic design from the post Regency period," Sam offered, looking at the refurbished pressed tin ceiling with a nod to the craftsmanship.

"Aw, that's precious," Dean chuckled. "Listen to you with all the details about your pretty, little life-sized dollhouse. Want me to make you a model of one for your birthday, Sammy?"

Sam scoffed and tossed a hard glare at his brother. Dean's default setting of 'treat Sam like a little sister' had gotten old 25 years earlier. Actually, he paused as he thought back to their childhood skirmishes, back then Dean was nicer then and less apt to take the Cro-Magnon approach to chiding and assigning feminine traits to his brother. The worst of the teasing did not begin until Sam turned 16 and Dean decided his little brother's haircut (or rather lack of one) made him appear more like a girl. That was also the year, Sam recalled, that he was finally taller than Dean. He suspected at the time that the two things were related (Sam's height and Dean's juvenile need to emasculate him), but after so many years he simply chalked it up to his brother ceasing his emotional maturity and social skill development at age 10 out of laziness and boredom, so he said as much in that instant.

"Oh, don't get cranky, Samantha," Dean continued parrying the verbal jab with ease. "Let's just take our look around and then I'll ask Carl if he'll let you have a tea party back at his place."

"Are you going to take this seriously at all?" Sam steamed as he clenched his jaw. "As I recall, this is your hunt, Dean. First, you act like you don't want to do this. Then you're all serious and ready to get it done by sundown. Now, you're screwing around. It's a little schizo, even for you, Dean, so if you think this case is such a joke, then…"

"Don't get your knickers or corset or whatever in a twist, Sammy," Dean continued. "This place just gives me the creeps."

"This place does?" Sam questioned. "We spend our lives in skeevy motels, graveyards, morgues, murder scenes and haunted houses, but this is the one that gives you the creeps? It's a perfectly remodeled classic. The nicest place we've ever stepped foot in next to that hotel in Connecticut."

"You and the dolls," Dean turned and shook his head. "Dude, where did I go wrong in raising you?"

"Shut up," Sam scowled. "Now, are you going to tell me what's bugging you or not?"

"It's just all so…. stuffy and formal," Dean shuddered as they walked into an ornate sitting room with a velvet covered fainting couch and polished piano. "It makes my skin crawl. I feel suffocated."

"It's the dust and the wood varnish," Sam observed, swiping a hand over a spindly-legged end-table with a fine powder covering it. "Construction crew obviously wasn't finished in all the rooms yet."

He too noted an oppressive, heavy feel to the air, but that did not match with his experience of things supernatural. It just felt like an old house that needed a good airing out. Dean continued through the room, shaking his head as he rolled his eyes at the decorations.

"Man, what is with all these beenies for tables and crap?" Dean shook his head as he flicked a lace covering with his finger.

"They're hand-stitched, lace doilies," Sam replied and regretted instantly as Dean deftly turned and grinned at him tauntingly.

"Dude, it's like you just can't help yourself, isn't it?" he shook his head in disgust. "Okay, anything in your research pointing to vengeful spirit activity on the premises? 'Cause the EMF is flat-lining here in Barbie's Antique Shop."

"You mean other than the owner being discovered torn to shreds in the kitchen with her blood being painted on the walls of her dressing room in the second floor turret?"Sam replied.

"Okay, I'm just gonna pretend you called it a bedroom and nothing else," Dean remarked shaking his head again.

"It's a classical form of architecture, Dean," Sam explained with a frustrated shrug. "I took a class in it my freshman year at college. The cultural, economic and social studies this style of home represents…"

"It's friggin' wood and glass with a lot of scrolly crap on everything and must be a bitch for the upkeep as far as the paint job is concerned," Dean scoffed and muttered the words '_cultural representations my ass_' under his breath.

"So given the choice, you're saying that you'd rather live in an underground bunker that doesn't even have windows?" Sam challenged.

"Yeah, because it beats a crap motel room or living here in the American Girl torture palace," he replied.

"Really?" Sam inquired. "Okay then, what about a different style of a real home? You know, with a yard and a place to park your car? Some place you can pick up your mail on your front porch?"

This was a new tactic of Sam's, one he was slowly employing since completing the first trial. He saw it, that night, in Dean's face: He was prepared to die a final time. He was going to take on the trials and die completing them. His mind was set on it. Sam had wrestled that opportunity from him and was now, slowly and surreptitiously, trying to plant ideas of a normal, hunting-free (or at least a hunting-lite) life into his brother's mind to take root. Dean's priority was always to save and protect Sam. If there was one thing Sam had learned in the last few years it was this: He needed to do the same for his big brother.

"The last time I fit into that kind of life, I was…," Dean began then shrugged and let his voice trail off.

At first, Sam worried he had blundered into a no-man's land of a topic: Lisa and Ben Braeden. Dean did not speak of them or the year he spent living with them. Sam was under dire orders to never mention either of them in Dean's presence again or he would get his nose broken. Sam believed his brother's threat, but he also felt the need to make amends. He and Dean were still picking their way through rebuilding their relationship following their year of separation. The trials were making that both very easy and very hard. The easy part came with the trials putting their differences and sore spots into stark perspective: When you were risking you life to lock the gates of hell, it made letting a lot of crap go simpler. Of course, the stress Sam was under to pass all the trials and the strain Dean was under trying to support Sam and accept that he himself could not do these trials was placing an immense pressure on the Winchester's as well. It was wise, Sam decided, to quickly and sincerely apologize for any accidentally trodden upon toe.

"There might come a day when you aren't white-knuckling it by worrying about the world collapsing around you," Sam offered.

Dean turned and looked at him with a genuinely puzzled expression. He blinked in confusion as he regarded his brother.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he asked. "I was four, Sam. I wouldn't call waiting for Dad to wake up on Saturday mornings so I could watch Bugs Bunny on TV white-knuckling it. I mean, the greatest concern in my life when I lived at home was … Never mind."

Sam gaped as he realized his second mistake. First, he had clumsily brought up the best-avoided subject of a normal life—something Dean was certain he could never have but wanted his brother to have. Next, Sam realized he misunderstood the root of the conversation. Dean did not think of his time with Lisa and Ben as having a home. No, in Dean's mind, home only existed in his earliest memories and was destroyed by fire, hell-fire that took their mother and his childhood. Sam silently scolded himself for brushing too close to such memories—particularly in light of Dean's recent brush with the past while they were in Vermont. His brother was still a bit raw from that encounter. Sam had foolishly hoped Dean's misadventure on the back side of a spell gone wrong would force Dean to bring a few more things to the surface, details of their past, but Dean's cold, brusque tone shut down all hope of that happening. Still, Sam felt he should try, if only on the off chance that this time it might work.

"Dean, I didn't think you meant…," he began, wondering how best to broach the topic of those long-ago and never spoken of memories of '_home_.'

"Drop it," Dean replied in a forcefully casual voice as he trekked deeper into the house, focusing on the EMF meter rather than his brother.

"No," Sam shook his head. "I'm not dropping it. You were about to say something. What was it?"

"About what?" he blinked and turned a guarded and impenetrable expression on his younger brother.

"About… home, our home in Lawrence," Sam encouraged. "You started to say the greatest concern in your life then was something. What was it?"

"It was 30 years ago, Sam," Dean grumbled. "I'm lucky if I remember what happened 30 days ago anymore. Hell, with the number of concussions I've had, I'm amazed I remember what happened 30 minutes ago. Remind me: Who are you again?"

Dean grinned quickly then turned away again and headed for the kitchen. Sam made to follow.

"No, you go look at the finger painting on her turret walls," Dean said and smirked. "That sounded dirty, didn't it?"

Sam rolled his eyes.

"I'll check the basement," Dean said and turned away.

Sam could hear Dean footfalls reach the room at the end of the hall and the creak of what was apparently the basement door. Sam he remained in the front parlor for a moment.

He swallowed hard and shook his head. Dean was an expert at avoiding discussions, particularly those that might let anyone peek behind the solitary warrior façade he spent a lifetime perfecting and reinforcing. Sam knew his brother was brave and strong and disciplined. He could withstand practically anything and would survive. Jokes about cockroaches, Keith Richards and Dean Winchester walking into a bar after a nuclear holocaust were not precisely outrageous. Still, there was also a warm and tender side to his brother that only Sam and few others ever got to know. Dean might like to say he was a total badass, but that was not the whole picture. He cared, a lot about certain people and things very dear to him. Sam and the Impala topped that list, but they were not all that was on it. Long-lost family members (blood and otherwise, like Bobby, Jo and Ellen) and his personal guardian angel (and persistent source of frustration) Castiel were there as were recent additions such as hacker-pal Charlie Bradbury and fellow hunter Garth Fitzgerald. Like it or not, Sam also knew, a Louisianavampire, Benny LaFitte, was on the list, too.

His big brother's well-guarded but tender heart was much more fragile than the man would admit, or that any demon or monster (or possibly even angel) ever truly suspected. Sam always knew when he had grazed one of Dean's soft spots when his brother grew stridently distant and forcefully unconcerned, just has he had a moment earlier. There were a few things that could generate that reaction and number one on that list were memories of their family before the evil came and tore Dean's world apart.

That coming November would mark 30 years since their mother was taken from them, basically all of Sam's life. While he missed her and still grieved her loss, he knew his longing was small compared to Dean's. Growing up, Sam felt he got the short end of the deal as he had no memories of his mother. When he broke from his family and went to college, he began seeing things different. He began to realize his feelings were those of jealous mostly, which put his heartache into perspective. Dean didn't have any parents after the fire. He lost his mother and his father became his drill sergeant. Sam, at least, had a substitute for both in the form of his older brother. Granted, Dean simply did not have the knowledge of the maturity to do the job of parenting fully at that time, but Sam at least had someone to watch out for him and take care of him and let him know he was loved. Dean was the one left flying solo so often.

Once Sam stated hunting again after leaving college, he began to realize that perhaps his own hurt about family matters was the preferable kind. He recalled being stunned at the way Dean spoke to Lucas Barr, a young boy who lost his father to a vengeful spirit in Lake Manitoc, WI. Dean mentioned, just barely within Sam's earshot, to the boy about losing his own mother and how that affected him. It was then that Sam finally began to understand the difference between his grief over his mother's death and Dean's grief. Sam longed to know her; Dean had truly lost her. He knew a world before hunting—something Sam did not—Dean knew a world with bedtime stories and dinner with his parents, of family outings holidays and birthdays. That made his transition to a life on the run without a home, without his toys, without his be, without security or a loving and doting parent, and without his friends a prison sentence because he knew and felt what he lost. It, nearly as much as the responsibility placed on him to take care of his baby brother, set the course for how Dean would look at everything for the rest of his life. All of it was done in comparison to what he loss.

Sighing as he realized there was no means to get Dean to open up about whatever memory glued his lips shut this time, Sam started to make his way up the stairs to get on with the case when a urgent noise, like a body tumbling down steps his ears followed by a scream of pain.

"Sam!" Dean shouted.

**oOoOoOo**

* * *

**A/N: **More to come.


	3. Chapter 3

**oOoOoOo**

Dean's scream shot lightning down Sam's spine.

The heart-stopping crash that sounded as his brother shouted for help left Sam's blood running cold. Dean could handle most anything. This house, although a crime scene, had seemed innocuous just moments earlier. Even to Sam, the place seemed a little frilly and fussy; it certainly didn't seem dangerous, but his brother had just screamed for him then gone suspiciously silent.

Sam tore down the hall and nearly ripped the pocket doors to the kitchen off their railings. He skittered past the blood stained floor were Ana's body was found a week earlier. He paid the rust colored marks on the floor and the wall no attention as he hurtled across the space and made for the basement stairs.

The first thing he noted was the darkness in front of him.

"Dean?" he shouted into the dark well leading below ground.

Sam flipped the switch on the wall several times. Nothing happened. A veil of blackness remained cloaking the scene. He took a hesitant step forward as he heard a low groan and the sound of shuffling far below. Sam hurried down the steps, toppling over his brother's folded legs as he reached the bottom. Sam hit the floor with a loud yelp of surprise and pain.

"Great," Dean grunted through clenched teeth. "First, I get pushed by the kids on the stairs, and then I get body slammed by Sasquatch. Told you this place was bad news."

His breaths came in sharp, painful gasps as he tried to untangle himself from his younger brother's sprawling body. The searing pain in Dean's side made each breath a stab of agony. Struggling to a seated position was also proving difficult as his left arm buckled under him as he tried lever his back into the wall for support. A bolt of white, hot pain shot from the base of his hand into his elbow, thrusting a sudden hiss through this teeth.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked, rubbing his own knees from the blunt force of hitting the ground when he tripped over Dean.

"Peachy," Dean groaned struggling slowly to his knees.

"What happened?" Sam asked, squinting into the gloom of the dark cellar. "Did you fall?"

"Stupid question," Dean snarled as he leaned his shoulder on the wall and used it to help him stand. "Of course I fell. Question is, why did I fall?"

"Okay," Sam shook his head, helping Dean stand by gripping his elbow. "How did you fall?"

Dean jerked his chin toward the EMF meter that lay halfway across the room. The bar of lights across the top still blinked and flared red. Sam retrieved it and waved it in a circle around him.

"Spirit activity," Sam noted. Dean nodded. "Did you feel the cold or hear anything or see anything?"

"Didn't notice the cold," Dean shook his head as he grabbed his ribs with one hand and tried concentrating on making a fist with the other; his fingers wouldn't budge. "Of course, it's a friggin' unheated basement so cold is kind of part of the package. No, just all of a sudden, the EMF went off like the 4th of July. I looked down at it, and then I heard laughing. Like little kids."

"Kids?" Sam asked. "You sure?"

"It was that or a couple of hyenas," Dean snarled, massaging his ribs lightly. "Felt one of them grab my foot and the other gave me a shove. Friggin' little bastards! I am so going to roast your bones!"

"Okay, okay," Sam said in a soothing tone. "Calm down. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just some bruises," Dean replied from his still stooped position. "I'll be fine. Come on, let's take a look around down here and then hit the art room upstairs."

The basement was large and, compared to the rest of the house, appeared to be the only area that did not benefit from a remodel. The floor was large flagstones laid into the dirt. A few centuries of mildew and mold, probably a handful of rats too, gave it the expected abandoned aroma. Sam dipped into Dean's bag, most of the contents had remained inside when he tumbled, and found a second flashlight. He located Dean's dropped flashlight several seconds later, although the batteries in that one appeared to be dead.

"Sapped?" Dean asked, taking the light and shaking it and wincing with the action. "New friggin' batteries, too. Dude, we should buy stock in Energizer, you know that?"

Sam turned his light on his brother's pain contorted face, making him squint and shy away from the beam. Sam chuckled dryly and shook his head.

"Yeah, I'll update our portfolio tonight," he replied flatly as he moved to a far corner where he saw a junction box.

A few second later, after inspecting the fuses, he flipped the one popped breaker. Resetting it quickly bathed the cellar in light. It was a sparsely used space. There was some construction debris in one corner, mostly painting supplies. The rest of the space was mostly bare with just a few dozen mildew covered storage boxes and some patio furniture stacked in near the bulkhead exit leading to the outside. The flagstone floor was not complete, they noted in their inspection. Some of the 2x2 flat stones were pried up in the vicinity of an old coal bin and chute. Some of the earthen floor was disturbed in that spot and fresh, small round stones were covering the top.

"Drainage," Dean nodded. "Looks like she was having the floor excavated. Damp enough down here. Must get flooded in the early spring or anytime there's a heavy rain."

Sam nodded, accepting the assessment. His brother might not a Latin scholar or overly interested in architecture or art, but anything that involved mechanics or engineering concepts was something Dean could diagnose and understand with the easy of recalling a lyric from a Led Zeppelin song.

"Okay, well, it's a basement," Sam shrugged. "The meter is going off, but I don't see anything… I mean, what am I missing here?"

Dean turned slowly and looked suspiciously at the walls just behind Sam. There were several large and unmatched cement and brick patches in the wall

"Yeah, I'm sure nothing bad _ever_ happened in here," Dean rolled his eyes. "Looks like a friggin' mausoleum. You see anything in the file about burials on the property?"

Sam shook his head, his knowledge of historical architecture proving valuable—and not just for an opportunity for Dean to call him a girl.

"Ovens," Sam revealed, turned to run his fingers over the rough seams of the bricked up spaces. "Might have been a fireplace for heating or some brick ovens at one time."

"The kitchen is upstairs, Sam," Dean pointed out.

"Yeah, now, but when they were first built, old houses like this sometimes put the kitchens in the basement," Sam explained. "Only servants went in them so they didn't get prime space in a house like homes today."

"So much for the organic, open-floor plan selling this place," Dean scoffed drawing a questioning look from his brother. "What? Hey, I don't only watch porn during the day."

Sam shook his head and studied the patches again. The masonry was leprous and the stone itself was decaying. The EMF did not trill any louder near the spot so he tried the next and the next. The reading remained relatively stable, but let them know for certain something was down there with them, Sam advised.

"Unless it's that," Dean said looking toward the ceiling.

Sam looked up to see what appeared to be fabric covered cables running into grimy canisters slightly larger than a spool of thread.

"What the hell?" Sam remarked.

"Knob and tube wiring," Dean sighed and shook his head defeatedly. "Ancient stuff. Unshielded, too, so it's probably throwing current if there's any juice in the wires still…"

"Then this is useless," Sam scoffed and thrust the still blinking meter into his pocket. "You're sure you were pushed?"

"No, I dove down the stairs for kicks, Sam," Dean scowled. "Yes, I was pushed. They were kids, well, spirits. Two, I think. Little brats. You know, I friggin' hate kid hauntings."

Dean hung his head and turned toward the stairs. Sam stepped close behind him, watching him navigate the stairs with great care. He was moving slower than expected for having just a few 'bruises.' Rather than comment on the apparent down-playing of the injury at the moment, Sam fixed his mind on the new details for this puzzle.

He shared his brother's distaste for hauntings in which the spirits of children were the culprits. First off, dead kids were just a downer. No hunter liked dealing with them. Burning the tiny bones of a child, who obviously died too soon, was bad enough. Dealing with the brats while you put them to rest was always an adventure in the worst babysitting one could imagine. They were rarely murderous—not purposefully anyway—but they were an unmitigated nuisance. The trouble with a child spirit was they simply never matured to the point of learning right from wrong in life. In death without a parent to corral and teach them properly, they were mischievous and creative. Generally, they were only looking to play, but their loneliness ramped up their antics. This often meant a lot of pushing and pinching and tripping. It was like having an active puppy at your heels and underfoot while you tried to work. They could get violent when their tantrums hit—usually from being ignored or supremely bored. They weren't usually strong enough to throw a full grown man across a room, but pushing people down stairs was telltale child spirit behavior.

Of course, that did not explain why Ana Crawford was sliced and diced; although Dean's earlier comment about her blood being used for finger painting seem a lot more reasonable. Still, child spirits did not usually shred and flay the people they wanted to play with, not normal child spirits anyway. There was always the chance the child in question was an evil little bitch in life and that death had done nothing to improve the behavior. The inn haunting the Winchester brothers investigated in Connecticut several years earlier was a prime example of that.

Sam and Dean reached the main floor and headed to the dark wood staircase leading to the upper story. Dean sighed deeply as he viewed the expanse of sweeping stairs that curled upward.

"Why can't this place have one of those chair things that carries you up the stairs?" Dean wondered. "Like that old bitty had in the movie Gremlins."

"Getting lazy in your old age?" Sam smirked. "Thirty-four isn't normally senior citizen territory, Dean."

"It is for a hunter," he remarked.

"How do you figure that?" Sam scoffed. "Bobby was 61 when he died."

"Yeah, and he started hunting when he was 32," Dean said as he took each step while biting back a groan of pain and began to relate his philosophy on age. "Life of a hunter begins when he begins a life of hunting. I've got 30 years in—makes me nearly Bobby's age as far as hunting goes."

"So that makes us nearly the same age," Sam noted. "I'm not having any trouble here, old man."

"I have a decade on you," Dean insisted as he turned a smug stare on his brother. "You'll be 30 in calendar years in a few weeks, but your hunting age is like 22. You lived with hunters, but you had no idea about it until you were nearly 12. I started at age four."

Sam blinked, surprised at the reaction. Dean never mentioned anything about his childhood-particularly the earliest parts of it-unless he was forced. Considering his mention of it earlier, Sam wondered if this might be one of those rare opportunities to ply his brother for some more details (the kind Dean kept to himself usually), but the pain in each of his older brother's breaths convinced the younger Winchester to hold off.

"Fine, you're a senior citizen, Dean," Sam relented. "I'll apply for your hunter's AARP card tonight. You know, if you keep huffing like that to walk up the stairs..."

"I'm fine, Sam," he groaned, dragging his hand on the banister for support as he trudged upward toward the bedroom located in the spiral turret.

"I'm just saying, if you want me to look around to see if Ana has an oxygen tank to help you out I can, grandpa," Sam mocked although his expression held much more concern.

"I could still kick your ass," Dean vowed as they reached the second floor.

Before the crime, it was a cream colored room with rounded walls and an detailed, stark white plaster ceiling with intricate scrolls. There was an immense four-poster bed with a flowery bedcover and a mountain of pillows at the head. The welcoming atmosphere was marred by the blood graffiti staining the large sweep of the wall facing the doorway.

Dean stood still gaping at the violent designs. He shivered as he crossed the threshold, instinctively reaching into his pocket to feel the mojo back still safely tucked there. The strange, uncertain feeling he felt since arriving in this town rolled through him again. He looked quickly at his brother who appeared unphased by it so Dean shook off the sensation and focused on the wall. The drawings were not arterial cast off from an attack. They also were not the random scrawls of a child. They were definitely symbols. The shapes and lines were geometric and precise, even if they were done in a frantic and mad fashion. The brothers surveyed the room then looked at each other and instantly said the same thing:

"Voodoo," they each said and simultaneously hung their heads.

The drawings threw a kink in the budding theory of child spirits run amok. This looked like serious spell work. The fact that the symbols were drawn in blood underscored that possibility.

"Might not be a spirit after all," Sam said after a long pause.

"Ya think?" Dean said. "Okay, so what's our worst case scenario here? Human psycho using black magic to get around the security? Yeah, that would be awesome."

Dean sighed heavy and groaned at the possibility. The supernaturally evil things in the world he could deal with; he didn't have sympathy for them or understand them, but there was a professional respect for what they were and what he could do to deal with them. Humans who chose to do this kind of crap, those, he thought, those were a special kind of monster that didn't deserve to live. Except, it wasn't his place to put them down. He'd run across more than a few of those types in his life as a hunter; he never walked away from those cases feeling like he scored a win.

"Wouldn't that be kind of a weird coincidence though?" Sam asked. "Possible children's spirits in the basement but a regular person does a voodoo ritual up here after killing Ana? A little far fetched with the two things not being related at all, don't you think?"

"Maybe," Dean said. "Or… Maybe we've got both, and they are related. Or it's not a child spirit at all, and it's just this, a voodoo ritual gone wrong."

"I don't know," Sam said doubtfully. "You think you were wrong about hearing kids? Seriously, when's the last time you misjudged a spirit?"

Sam regarded his brother with a flat expression. He considered Dean a genius and while that wasn't just about hunting, Sam could not deny that hunting was what his brother knew best. Dean had lived nearly all of his life-all that he admitted to remembering anyway-in the world of hunting. Their father did not spare or protect Dean from the knowledge of the darkness around them. How could he? Dean was exposed to the murder of their mother; he heard his father's ramblings about what happened in the nursery. While it was (in Sam's contention) a form of child abuse, it was also what made his brother so very good at what he did: save people and hunt things. If Dean's first instinct said there were child spirits in the basement, Sam wasn't going to ditch that theory until there was hard evidence to do so. Dean continued to look at the murderous mural in front of them. He said nothing for several long moments. From his expression, Sam could read that Dean didn't think he was wrong about hearing children. The shove and the trip were classic phenomena. Dean knew what he heard and what he felt when he fell.

"I don't know," Dean replied cautiously as he shook his head as he gazed at the blood sigils with countless memories of seeing the various shapes and symbols in his past. "It's kind of weird, though. Voodoo? Here in white bread land? These people are Puritans. They didn't grow up in the Delta. This is some heavy scribbling, Sammy."

Dean tried to shrug but instead winced in pain at the motion. Sam caught the catch in his breath and stared at him. Dean moved away, trying to avoid the scrutiny. He turned toward the high, four-poster bed and the three drawer nightstand beside it. He reached forward to open the top drawer then suddenly gasped in pain and gripped his side even tighter.

Sam quickly snatched his arm and forced him to a seated position on the bed. He locked eyes with his brother and demanded an answer.

"Okay, fess up," Sam said. "How bad is it? And what is it? Just a rib or is it something more?"

Dean waved off Sam's attention and continued to sift through the drawer. He found a small handwritten journal. He held it up to Sam. The dates stretched back five years, roughly the time since the renovation began. A quick skim of the pages indicated it was about the progress of the work.

"Renovation can wake up things that were sleeping," Dean said with a groan as he pulled himself to a standing position again.

"Dean," Sam began. "I need to check you out."

"Perv," Dean scoffed and made to walk away.

Sam caught his shoulder and gripped it tightly. Dean frozen, unable to shake the restraint free without howling in pain. Sam judged his brother's condition based on his lack of resistance.

"Two choices: I look or an ER doctor does," Sam said. "Don't fight with me on this."

"Fine," Dean relented as he waggled the diary in his hand. "We head back to Carl's and do some reading. It's your favorite part of a case, Professor: the research."

"You're getting checked out first," Sam insisted.

"I said okay," Dean grumbled. "A little triage and then research." Sam glared at him. "And… painkillers. Alright? If it'll make you happy, I'll work the journal from Carl's place, and you hit the library and the town hall."

Sam nodded. He suspected he would get stuck with the library research in the end. He always did. Dean submitting so quickly to laying low at Carl's raised more concern for the younger Winchester. Either Dean was hurt worse than Sam already feared or Dean was up to something. Neither option left Sam feeling good about this hunt any longer. However, he figured it would be easiest to figure out what was going if he played along for the moment.

"Okay," Sam nodded. "I'll look for childhood deaths and other evidence history of the property. You chill out and see what Ana was up to."

**oOoOoOo**

The Winchesters arrived back at Carl's—following a grumbling stand-off for the keys and right to drive in the driveway at Ana Crawford's house, which Sam won after overpowering his brother (another disconcerting sign of his injuries). Once back at Carl's home, Dean refused to let his brother check his ribs, claiming they no longer hurt, and he wanted to get working on the diary. Sam glared at his brother for several minutes before storming out in exasperation. He did not, however, go to the library. Instead, he stopped at a diner in town and picked up lunch. He might be mad, but if there was one thing he hoped that he and Dean had learned over the years, it was to take care of each other when they were in a vulnerable spot. Not doing so had proved nearly disastrous more often than not in the past. So, 30 minutes later, he returned with a heart-attack in a sack for Dean (bacon cheeseburger and fries) and a chef's salad for himself. He wasn't precisely hungry—eating wasn't something that Sam was overly interested in lately-but keeping up appearances was necessary when one of them was playing hurt.

He wasn't sure what he would return to at Carl's. Dean might be gone; he might be self-medicating; he might be unconscious on the floor from internal bleeding. The last one worried him most. So, as he entered the dwelling, he was surprised to find his brother precisely where he left him: on the couch reading.

"I brought food," Sam announced as he dropped the bag on the kitchen table.

It was as close to an apology and peace treaty as the Winchester's normally got with the little spats that flared during hunts. Dean looked up, pain clearly etched into his face, and carefully peeled himself off the couch. Sam watched him with hawkish eyes, studying his movements, and convinced himself that Dean was nursing at least one but more likely two broken ribs. The fact that he was not coughing blood was encouraging. It meant neither of the broken bones had penetrated a lung.

Sam had seen too much blood over the years, and much of it had been his brother's. He wasn't sure which sight was most haunting to him: Dean pinned to the wall while Yellow Eyes (wearing their father's body) carved him up and tore apart his psyche in John's voice; his brother's limp body bleeding in the back of the Impala after they were nearly crushed by an oncoming semi piloted by a demon; or Dean torn to shreds by a hellhound on the floor of a well-appointed home in New Hope, Indiana. Oddly, his disappearance to Purgatory, had been easier to watch. There was a terror-filled moment for Sam when he realized he had no idea what happened or where Dean was. But, as his mind went into grieving and survival mode, he convinced himself Dean was just gone that time; he felt his stomach twist again as he recalled soothing himself with the knowledge that at least there was no body to dispose of.

Looking at his brother again, the one who vexed him to near insanity sometimes, and whose support and companionship he needed more than words could describe, he again felt those conflicting emotions: care for Dean or beat the crap out of him.

"Are you going to let me check your ribs or not?" Sam asked as Dean lowered himself cautiously into a chair.

"I'm fine," Dean replied (predictably). "Stop worrying. You gonna do some work on this case after you eat your rabbit food, or am I the only one on the job this afternoon?"

Sam scowled and dug into his salad, refusing to rise to the bait. Dean was trying to piss him off in an effort to remove any attention from his injuries. Sam might have the shorter fuse of the two brothers and Dean might be better at lighting that fuse than any other force in the universe, but Sam was also wise. He knew his brother's tactics. The more Dean tried to distance Sam from him in the little ways, the worse pain he was in.

"Yeah, of course," Sam said, looking up with an innocent face. "Just figured we'd get lunch and then we start the research. Hey, pass me the pepper."

He asked the question casually. He could easily reach across Dean's meal and grab the shaker in front of Dean, but wanted to do a range of motion check on his brother. Yes, it was sneaky, but his older brother was being deceptive, too. Fire with fire was a Winchester staple in the family fight game.

However, the result was not what Sam expected. The shaker was in front of his brother's left arm, yet Dean opted for the more painful way of retrieving it by twisting and grabbing it with his right, then turning back to Sam to hand it off.

"What's with your left arm?" Sam asked, dropping his plastic fork into the salad container.

"Still attached," Dean smiled.

"Why aren't your elbows on the table?" Sam asked, folding his arms as he struck an accusing pose.

"Because that's bad manners, Sammy," Dean chided, shoving a few French fries in his mouth. "Didn't I raise you better than that?"

Sam glared at him. Dean was always putting his elbows on the table, and yes, he did raise Sam not to do the same thing. The fact that he was hiding his left was a point of concern.

"Really?" Dean shook his head. "The bitch-face? Already? This has to be a record. Not even 24 hours on a case and all ready I'm…"

"Arm. Table. Now," Sam ordered.

His voice was menacing as he rose to his full height and loomed over his brother. Dean leaned back slightly, mocking him with the recoiling motion. Sam reached forward, intent on grabbing the arm if needed. Dean, sensing the futility of his resistance, reluctantly lifted his wrist and lay it flat on the table.

"You might be Borg," he grumbled. "Might explain a lot of other things about you, too."

Sam shook his head, ignoring the Star Trek reference. Sarcasm was one of Dean's preferred defense mechanisms. Throwing in scifi references was typical and expected. It always amazed Sam how often his brother dubbed him the geek in the family, but Dean was the one who liked cult favorites like Star Trek and fantasy role-playing games. Sam reluctantly joined in with him for Charlie's 'Moondor' escapade, but he knew Dean was drafting strategy and battle plans for their expected participation in the mid-season gathering in several months time. Sam would have had some choice digs at his brother for that, but he always refrained. It was little pleasures like that which brought Dean real moments of joy and showed that some part of him still believed in tomorrows.

Sam moved to the other side of his brother and crouched down closer to the table to examine his arm. With careful and tender movements, Sam slid the sleeve of Dean's over shirt back from his brother's wrist. He folded the cuff back and looked at the puffy and swollen joint. He noted the heat from the wrist and the growing discoloration. He turned less than sympathetic eyes to his brother, who met the expression with a grin that was guilty and trying to be unconcerned by the pain obviously radiating from the joint. Sam hung his head and took a deep breath as he reminded himself that hitting Dean would only add to the injuries.

"Dean," Sam reminded him in a tense but forcefully calm tone, "the rule is broken bone equals hospital."

"No," Dean corrected confidently. "Broken _and_ displaced bone equals hospital. Cracked bone equals aspirin and an excuse not to carry your bag for a week. Nothing displaced here."

"You don't know that," Sam argued.

He lightly pressed Dean's wrist, feeling for a pulse to see how much pressure the swelling was placing on the veins in the area. It was there, throbbing just below the surface, but the grimace on his brother's face told the story of the pain Sam's touch caused.

"Nothing poking through the skin, dude," Dean shook his head. "Trust me, Sam. I know when I have a bad break. This isn't one of those. This is… annoying. Swelling will go down in a day or two. I'll have full range again in a week, tops."

Sam ground his teeth, knowing he was encountering the Great Wall of Winchester with his attempts to get his brother proper medical care. While they did not usually go to hospitals, there were a few things that necessitated professional medical intervention. Lacerations that required more than a dozen stitches, high fevers persisting more than two days or other evidence of infection and (regardless of Dean's current re-interpretation of the rules) broken bones (for anything other than a finger or toe).

"Dean," he began again in a concerned and reasonable tone, "you've got a few cracked ribs and certainly a broken wrist. This is not something we haggle about or negotiate over."

"Neither of those is fatal," Dean remarked.

"Fatty embolism," Sam countered succinctly. "So your point is…."

"What did you just call me?" Dean asked.

"Cut the stupid act, Dean," Sam snapped. "You know precisely what that is. Can lead to heart attack, stroke, death."

"So can my lunch," the elder Winchester scoffed exasperatedly. "Long bones, Sam. Fatty embolism's come with broken long bones. That's like a broken leg, not a little bone in the wrist."

"Ribs, Dean," Sam said forcefully.

"No thanks, I already got a burger," Dean grinned, smiling through the pain screaming from his eyes from his brother's continual probing of the wrist injury. Sam scowled. "What?"

Sam carded his hand through his hair and clenched his jaws to keep from snapping. The muscles in his cheek jumped angrily. Suddenly, a dark and superior smile pulled the corners of his mouth back. He again drew himself to his full height and spoke down to Dean in a tone that let him know his older brother that he was being childish and would receive appropriate treatment for that.

"Fine, you're… grounded," Sam insisted.

"Grounded?" Dean repeated and stood with his uninjured arm wrapped tightly against his ribs. "What do you mean grounded?"

"You're not going back to that house with me is what I mean so: grounded," Sam stated.

"Yeah, right," Dean scoffed. "You can't ground me. First off, I'm not a friggin' child. Next, I'm older than you. I can ground you. Not the other way around, Sammy."

"Well, tough," Sam said. "New rules. Whoever isn't injured can ground whoever is."

"You can't just make up rules," Dean said shaking his head. "Rules are like… laws."

"Yeah, the people who are in charge just makes those up, Dean," Sam said arrogantly.

"Okay, but you're not in-charge," Dean argued.

In typical older brother fashion, he stepped into Sam's personal space. Despite Sam's superior height, he felt the intimidation from his injured brother. Sam took a step back but kept his arms folded, mostly in an effort not to throw a sleeper hold on Dean. Knocking Dean out and dragging him to the ER was not off the list of options, but Sam considered it a last resort. He knew Dean would resist that strong-armed tactic. Although Dean was injured, he often fought even harder when hurt. Also, Sam knew he himself wasn't operating at full capacity. Tangling with Dean in hurt animal mode surely wouldn't improve things.

"Right now I am," Sam said, standing his ground. "So, new rule or law is that…"

"No," Dean interrupted. "Rules come from somewhere higher than you."

"I am taller," the younger brother verbally jabbed, drawing a murderous scowl on Dean's face.

"No, that rule I just said, about you not grounding me, that's Dad's rule," Dean snarled. "I could ground you. Never was the other way around. Only Dad could ground me."

"What about Bobby?" Sam countered easily, parrying the argument. "Bobby could ground you; he did it a few times. Bobby wasn't Dad. Ergo, not only Dad could ground you. So much for your rule."

Dean glared back. Sam knew it was at the 'ergo' more than anything else. Dean's narrowed gaze grew fiery and his shoulders bunched in a defensive posture. Sam remained still and glared back.

"Do you see Bobby here?" Dean asked. Sam shook his head. "Well, I know Dad isn't here either. So, they're the only ones who…"

"Let it go, Dean," Sam shouted with finality. "Decision is made. You are laying low for now. I mean it!"

His brother backed off slightly, taking a step back. Dean cocked his head to the side. Sam could see the thoughts whirling behind his mossy green eyes. This was Dean in his non-linear, creative mode (arguably his most dangerous on the intellectual side of things). Sam waited to see what would come out of his mouth next and was not disappointed.

"So if I hit you and injure you, I get to ground you?" Dean asked.

Sam stammered for a moment and shook his vigorously. He scoffed at the insanity of the implied threat and the questionable logic behind it. Dean, inventing wildly, was so difficult to predict. It was what made him both a formidable opponent to evil creatures and a danger to himself on any hunt.

"No purposefully injuring someone just to have the power to…," Sam began then shook his head and growled in frustration. "Argh! You do this all the… You've got me feeling and arguing like a 10-year-old! Dean, you are hurt. You need to heal. You're no good to us if you can't do the job properly. Now, I am going to the library, and you are going to stay here to rest and ice your injuries."

"Fine," Dean barked.

"Well… good," Sam nodded, vigorously, not certain he won the argument.

He was extremely suspicious of Dean's sudden retreat but could think of no reason to question it. Sam, at least, had the keys to the Mercedes. He locked eyes with his brother. Dean's expression betrayed nothing. He was certainly angry at this turn of events. He might be plotting something, but Sam could not discern what that might be.

With suspicions high but concrete excuses to stay and babysit his brother low, Sam finished his salad and palmed the keys. He departed for the library and left his brother silently picking at his fries. What Sam discovered after he dug into the history of Ana Crawford's house kept him riveted to historical accounts filed deep in the library's dusty archives and muddied the waters further for what they might be facing.

But even the dark past that hid behind the fancy face of the ornate Victorian home was nothing compared to what he found when he finally returned to the police chief's house late that afternoon.

**oOoOoOo**


	4. Chapter 4

**oOoOoOo**

The cold and clammy feeling wouldn't abate.

It started roughly the moment Dean got into the boat to go to the island and hadn't let up yet.

He wasn't sure of the cause. Certainly the weather was a factor. The sun was deceptive. It would shine, but the temperature hovered in the mid-40s. Which wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't so damn damp. _Why did islands have to be in the middle of the water, anyway?_

He knew, in the pit of his stomach, this wouldn't be a pleasant hunt (at least climate wise) from the moment he and Sam left the mainland with Carl. Leaving Baby behind never boded well. Replacing her with a boat was an insult. If she was going to be replaced by something that went in water, he felt the only thing suitable would be an amphibious assault craft-something the Navy SEALs or Chuck Norris would use (not that Chuck Norris needed an amphibious assault craft of course-great white sharks steered clear of the guy when he went scuba diving).

Then again, boats were generally not Dean's thing either. He didn't mind them; he liked water, liked being by the water (as long as it didn't involve a friggin' flesh eating monster or a water wraith). Water usually meant fun (girls in bikinis, leisurely days, sultry nights... and now in his mind it also meant '_Vampirates'_, but he pushed thoughts of Benny and his now deceased nest-mates from his mind just as he did hot chicks in string bikinis).

The problem right now wasn't the water or the boat. It was the air.

There was something off about it.

Sammy didn't feel it, which could mean that the kid was more screwed up from the first trial than he was admitting. Dean felt that was more likely than there was something wrong with himself. Or, that's what he kept telling himself as that creeping feeling—the one he hadn't felt in ages, like since he went on the first ghost hunts with his father—began slithering down his spine again.

He shook the feeling off and looked at the clock on the wall. Sam departed an hour ago. Two minutes after he left, Dean made a phone call. He wasn't used to relying on anyone but Bobby in a hunt, but times changed and sometimes you had to swallow your pride and dig deep for answers. That his fellow hunter was overly eager and practically excited to lend a hand was not unexpected. Dean was only looking for a little insight, some research. What he got instead was a promise to be at the Ferry Dock in three hours. How that would be managed was not a detail Dean asked about. He just made plans to be there then set the timer on his phone before crashing on the couch to get some sleep.

The chill in his bones was just sucking the life out of him. He folded his arms tightly about his chest as he settled into the couch and listened to the frigid wind moaning at the windowpanes.

_How do people live in this climate year round on purpose_, he wondered. Then he recalled these weren't normal people. _These were New Englanders_.

As a rule, New England and New Englanders confounded Dean. Uptight, pushy, know-it-alls who talked fast and walked fast and had so many friggin' rules for everything thing on the planet, yet they violated the most sacred rule there was, and they did it with pride in the name of their largest city.

_Boston Cream Pie_, he reminded himself shaking his head in frustration. _Not friggin' pie at all. It was cake. Cake posing as pie. Lying cake. Deceptive cake. Delicious cake, granted, but still it was CAKE._

_Except when it was a donut. _

_And somehow, the ancestors of these people had their crap together enough to start a Revolution and kick the British out? _

_Yeah, _he told himself (not for the first time), _so glad Sammy and I are not related to these people. Sure, our family chose to live in the heart of tornado alley, a place more famous for the terrible storms and endless acres of nothingness from the wheat fields, but at least they knew what constituted friggin' pie._

**oOoOoOo**

Sam stared at the microfiche image in front of him. He was shocked.

First, this library still had microfiche.

The librarians had iPads. The chairs were ergonomically correct. The light was eco-friendly. There was an organic café just off the reading room… and they had yet to digitize their damn microfiche collection. Even the library in Sioux Falls, SD had theirs uploaded onto a server and was searchable by key words.

_Money floats around this island—even the crappy neighborhoods are populated by millionaires and they can't even throw a few grand at some PDF scans and a dedicated server_, Sam grumbled. The only thing that ceased his quiet bitch-fest was the worry he was taking the Dean approach in his grousing.

After two hours of scrolling through the blurry images, Sam found what he suspected he would and what he feared he would: hints of a family tragedy.

Ana Crawford's house was 150 years old, and there were plenty of owners and plenty of questionable deaths (if you knew what to look for). There was the doctor who owned it from the 1960s until the 1990s when Ana bought it; he fell down the stairs. His death at 85 was ruled accidental. Roger Thomas's death was also an accident, according to the report. In 1922, he was electrocuted while trying to unplug all the lamps in the home during a severe electrical storm. There was also Elizabeth Middleton, who perished from smoke inhalation in the 1880s; mysteriously the flue to the fireplace in her bedroom was shut when she went to bed one evening with a crackling fire to keep he warm. The deaths were all well-spaced and completely reasonable, except when you looked at the history on a timeline. Most houses did not post multiple owner deaths on the premises, even when the house had been around for more than a century.

The fall and the flue were typical child spirit pranks gone awry. The electrocution also had the ring of naughty kids meddling in things they did not understand. The question, of course, was what child died or was buried in the property to be doing these deadly stunts. The answer, when Sam found it, was obvious.

In 1865, just as the Civil War was ending, Marcus and Matilda Cooper arrived in Chilmark to act as the maid and butler to the Spencer family. The Spencer's did not live in Chilmark full-time. They only summered there, but they required their servants to maintain the house year-round. The Coopers were not a friendly or happy family. They had two young children, boys—Adam and William, who were the scourge of the area. They were caught putting fish in a neighbor's fountain; they adopted stray dogs and let them run wild over others' property. They climbed trees, damaging the thin limbs on new ones, and destroyed the meticulous hedges surrounding the elaborate gardens of the large and flowing estates.

Their father was said to be a patient man who would promise the boys would be leaving the area to go live with relatives. Their mother was seen chasing them with a leather strap. Whether neighbors felt sorry for the children was unclear, but they were pleased when it appeared the boys finally took their journey to see family elsewhere.

What made Sam leery of this convenient departure were reports about Marcus being arrested for public intoxication at a local tavern the summer the boys were said to have left. He was also arrested for threatening to burn the Spencer house to the ground. At the time, police thought it was due to the breakup of his family. No serious inquiry was made into the matter.

"Idiots," Sam sighed as he rubbed his dry, tired eyes and finished printing copies of the story.

It was apparent to him that one (or likely both) of the boys died at the house that summer. Whether it was through misadventure or at the hands of a parent finally out of patience, he did not know. What he did know was that there were bones of at least one of them undiscovered on the property. Where to look for them was going to take some work.

Sam pulled out his phone and dialed his brother. Surprisingly, Dean did not respond. Sam thought it odd but simply left him a message about what he had learned.

"So let me know what your gut's telling you about where we should start looking a gravesite," Sam yawned. "I'm thinking we're looking for two. You said you got tripped and pushed and that you thought it was kids, plural. It's looking like both boys died there. Anyway, I'm heading back to Carl's. See you in a few."

His own brain was mush after spending several hours sifting through archives to learn the history of the house and dig up the pattern. Sam might be the better researcher (or he might just be the one usually sent on that task), but he knew his brother was actually the one better at spotting odd patterns. Sam tucked the printed pages into his pocket as he headed for the car. Dean, he hoped, would find some indication of where to start looking on the 25 acre estate for unmarked graves.

Sam shook his head at the thought of that daunting task. Sometimes, jobs were like this. You figured it out quickly, who was the big bad, but it took a lot longer to locate the problem and deal with it. He felt good, realizing they were facing children. Like his brother, he didn't enjoy dispatching children one more time, but they were easier than deceased adults usually.

Sam's thoughts again strayed to Dean.

Something was bothering him on this hunt, Sam knew. He wondered if it was Carl and whatever happened on the hunt when they met. Of course, Sam didn't know anything about that hunt other than it scared Carl, Dean could have gotten shot for his movie quotes, and it involved a revanent. He felt he really should know more about it, as if Dean and Carl were keeping something from him. It seemed highly unlikely that it was relevant to the current case, except Dean was sending off weird vibes which was giving Sam uneasy feelings (angry ones, too if he stopped to think about it). Not that Sam thought it odd for his brother not to speak about the case with Carl. It was one of his best learned lessons from their father: The hunt is done, move on and don't think about it anymore. The hunt in question was so many years ago, so many hunts ago. It was several end of the world's ago when Sam stopped to think about it.

It was just that whenever someone from the Winchester's past showed up in their present, it rarely boded well. Their recent trip to see James Frampton, cop turned witch with a canine familiar, proved that. Sam paused on that thought.

Could it be that simple?

Dean did not believe in coincidences, but he also had very little faith in his fellow man. Sam wondered if Frampton's dabbling in Wiccan magic with his shape shifting familiar had put his brother on edge for meeting up with Carl Whitney again. Not that Carl was showing any signs of practicing witch craft. Still, Sam figured it was an easy enough thing to check so rather than return to Carl's house (one he reminded himself showed no signs of a black altar or any spell work being done in it), he instead headed for the police department.

The sleepy, off-season island life left things quiet at the Police Station. The clerk at the front desk said the chief had left a few minutes earlier for the Crawford house then vaguely waved Sam toward the parking lot. Finding the visit much more odd than the clerk did, Sam headed back out to the site on the far end of town. He arrived to see Carl's squad car in the driveway and the chief still sitting in the driver's seat, pecking keys on the computer embedded into the dashboard. Sam knocked on the window as the man hammered the keys merciless and swore loudly enough it could be heard through the closed windows.

"You know, hitting the keys harder doesn't actually make it work better," Sam offered as he leaned on the car.

"I believe in percussive management," Carl said angrily, flexing his sausage-sized fingers. "I'm trying to erase your earlier visit from the security log. The system said I needed to be 'in range' to do it so I drove out here to try."

"Is there a problem?" Sam wondered.

"Not yet and I'd like to keep it that way," Carl said, heaving himself out of the car as the computer screen reset appropriately. "I just recall that your brother has a certain, shall we say flare, for stirring up trouble or being around when trouble starts bubbling. Don't get me wrong, I'm damn glad he knows how to deal with that, but I like my life quiet. I'm retiring in a few years, and I'd like to do it on a full pension."

Sam nodded, understanding the man's hesitation, but not liking the continued suspicion he felt. Or maybe suspicion wasn't the right word. Carl had done nothing overtly untrustworthy. When he dissected their interactions so far, what bothered Sam mostly was how Dean was acting.

"Can I get inside?" Sam asked. "I want to check something."

"Sure," Carl nodded and started toward the house while fishing some keys from his pocket.

"You're going in with me?" Sam asked skeptically.

"I'm allowed," Carl nodded, twisting the lock and letting the door swing inward freely. He shuddered on the threshold. "At least, I think I should be."

Sam paused and watched the man carefully. He held his breath for a moment closed his eyes. He seemed to be talking to himself before taking a steadying breath and stepping inside. He turned and looked at Sam's bewildered expression.

"Saying a prayer; the place gives me the creeps," he shrugged. "Guess this is sort of everyday stuff for you?"

"Pretty run of the mill," Sam replied. "This one, actually, has been easier than a lot of what we've had to deal with in the last couple years. It's almost like a vacation."

Carl glared at him and shook his head as he started toward the staircase. Sam called him back.

"I need to see the basement," he offered. "I think it would be better if we stick together. This is a pretty standard haunting, but the ghosts here have a juvenile sense of humor. They tend to hurt people accidentally."

"Accidentally?" Carl repeated. "Standard haunting? Man, I do not know how you guys keep it together… or maybe you don't. Dean, he's… different than I remember."

"Well, he's been through a lot," Sam said simply. "We both have, but yeah, we're holding it together for now."

"He seems more… edgy," Carl noted. "I knew he was crazy the day we met, but he got this thrill out of what he did. It doesn't seem like he does, not with this job anyway. Is he bored or is something else going on?"

_Well, I'm trying to close the gates of hell and he suspects it's going to kill me, but other than that_, Sam thought but opted not to say aloud. He, too, had noticed his brother's sudden stilted and aloof posture. It felt a lot like when he was hid their father's last words from Sam. It was as though he was carrying an immense burden, a secret that scared him. Sam could not think what it might be as he had been with his brother every moment of this trip. The ride to the coast was typical—enjoyable even—it was when they came into contact with Carl at the docks that Dean retreated into his shell.

Sam cast a wary look at Carl but said nothing. Instead, he turned on the switch for the basement lights and descended. The space below was cold and damp, but not the frigid cold often associated with spirit activity. The lights remained on without flickering—another good sign. He got to the bottom of the stairs and surveyed the area.

"If you were going to hide a body in a basement with an earth floor, where would you put it?" Sam asked Carl.

The chief looked at him with a wild expression then nodded as he opted to play the game.

"Near a wall and in a shadow, where it wouldn't attract attention that the ground was disturbed," Carl said. "Of course, with all these stones, those would cover it up pretty good too. Who's buried here?"

"There's a murder on the loose, but not one you can catch," Sam assured him. "At least one, but more likely, two young boys—ages 8 and 11—were killed here in the 1860s. Either it was an accident and the parents covered it up or, and this is more likely, one of the parents killed the kids and the other helped cover it up. The boys are probably buried down here."

Carl looked at him with a pale expression. He swallowed hard and reflexively put his hand on his pistol grip in its holster. Sam shook his head and explained the bullets wouldn't do any good—although his memory did tell him Dean had pumped several rounds into an apparition once to distract her from crushing Sam's heart in his chest. Still, distracting a Lady in White was one thing; dispatching two mischievous child spirits was not going to be done with a 9 mm Sig Sauer.

"We can't burn the bones until we find them," Sam continued as his attention was drawn to the old coal bin in the far corner. "It's just a hunch, but this basement seems most likely spot. Hey, does this look like new construction to you?"

He shifted the disturbed flagstones he and Dean noted on their previous visit. At first, he thought they were moved as part of Ana's renovation, but looking at them now, it appeared they were out of place but more settled in their current spots.

"Not really," Carl shrugged. "This floor is pressed pretty hard. They were having a hell of a time digging it up and bringing in the pea stone as I recall. One of the workers is my deputy's nephew. He said they were going to have to dig this whole floor down a foot and do it by hand with spades."

"Then what?" Sam asked, peering into the ancient coal bin to see more debris piled in it than a few decades without use should dictate.

"Then they'd bust through the walled up space above that was the coal chute and send a few tons of pea stone down it. They'd rake it out and take care of the water problems."

"The coal bin and the area around it probably got the most traffic when they were heating the house with fires, right?" he questioned, looking into the dark container. "Coal's organic, too. That's why it burns. It smells as well."

"Stinks," Carl nodded then realization dawned on his face. "The boys are at the bottom of the bin?"

"Vegas money says yeah," Sam nodded. "We'll need shovels, salt, lighter fluid and some matches."

"We can't burn the house down," Carl said.

"We won't," Sam assured him.

"Good because we can't have that kind of excitement here," Carl replied as suddenly the radio on his hip screeched and squawked with a variety of codes were shouted by the dispatcher. "What the fuck?"

Carl pulled the handset off and demanded to hear the report again.

"Chief, that you?" the voice of the clerk from the police station asked urgently.

"Yeah, it's me," he said. "I'm still at the Crawford house with one of them insurance guys. What's going on? Sounds like you're reporting Armageddon!"

"Thank god it's not you," she gasped. "Bruce stopped by your place to see if you went home for the day. When you didn't answer, he went around to the deck to see if you were outside and he peeked into the house. Chief, there's blood everywhere!"

The chief and Sam looked at each other in the same instant and the same word graced both of their lips: Dean.

**oOoOoOo**

Racing through narrow, winding streets in quiet neighborhoods was not Sam's specialty. Sam was a primarily a passenger by training and birth order. Dean seemed to think that driving was his universal right so squealing around corners on two wheels as he tailgated the siren and flashing lights on Carl's patrol car was a bit of a harrowing experience, especially since the Mercedes seemed to drift a bit. In the back of his mind, Sam found a new level of respect for both the Impala and Dean's smoothing handling of her in high speed situations.

They arrived at Carl's home to find an ambulance, two more squad cars, a fire truck and dozens of onlookers all being held at bay by several harried looking cops. Sam charged out of his car and was on Carl's heels as they crossed the police crime scene tape.

The stretcher was in the ambulance still with no body in it. There was no one seated on the bumper getting treatment either. Sam's heart jumped into his throat as he stepped past Carl heading for the house. He was held back briefly by a nervous and ineffectual patrolman, but the man stepped aside at Carl's order.

Inside, the house was in disarray. The coffee table was upended and the couch cushions were strewn about the room. The pictures on the large wall opposite the TV were shattered on the floor, but more disturbing than the apparent evidence of a break in with a scuffle was the blood.

It covered the wall in a manic mural. Sam stared at the markings and felt his stomach flip.

It was strikingly similar to the graffiti on Ana Crawford's wall. The main difference was a slight alteration in the markings and the fact that this blood was still fresh.

Sam swallowed hard and searched the floor. No body lay there. He moved swiftly to the kitchen, the bathroom and finally the bedroom where Dean slept the previous night.

There was no sign of his brother.

"What the hell is going on?" Carl asked in a harsh whisper. "Did those little ghosts come to my house?"

"I don't know," Sam shook his head as he grabbed for his phone.

He quickly thumbed down to Dean's number and dialed; it went directly to voicemail. Sam clenched is teeth and cursed under his breath. Going directly to voice mail meant the phone wasn't on, which mean GPS was useless. The only good sign Sam could find in this situation was that Dean's phone was not laying on the floor. There was a chance that, wherever he was, it was on him.

"Okay this has gone from pretty routine into something just hit the fan, right?" Carl demanded, still keeping his voice low. "What the hell is going on? First Ana, now my house gets broken into and vandalized? They're getting the field kit to test whether that's human blood."

Sam nodded, feeling his own blood drain from his face. So many questions whirled in his brain that he did not know if he could grab onto one long enough to concentrate and speak it out loud.

"That crap on the walls, that's like voodoo, isn't it?" Carl snarled. "It just hit me why I called Dean when this case hit. I think I recognized some of that writing, only I didn't know I did until just now. I saw some of that in New Orleans. That shit is scary. What the fuck is it doing here?"

"I'm not sure," Sam shook his head, looking again at his phone knowing it would not give him the answer he wanted. "A spell or something worse maybe."

"Like a deal?" Carl wondered, drawing a surprised and narrowed eye-stare from Sam. "That selling your soul kind of thing, like at a crossroads?"

"How do you know about that?" Sam asked, but before he could respond, one of the crime scene techs called to Carl.

Sam remained in the bedroom, looking for any sign of his brother. He looked into his bag and found the typical compliment of weapons, but noted that his Colt 1911 was not present. Like his phone, that too was likely on his person. Still, that did not help Sam determine where he was. His greatest fear was one of their earlier theories: the supernatural part of this case was the kids in the basement; the blood work on the walls was a human psycho. If that was so, maybe the predator had watched the Winchesters and followed them then jumped Dean after seeing Sam leave.

The house was in disarray, but it did not look like whatever or whoever came in met much of a fight. That didn't sit well with Sam. Dean wouldn't give in easily and certainly wouldn't worry what damage he did to Carl's house in a fight. As Sam looked back into the living room, it appeared to him more like a staged scene or like a powerful wind whipped through the room rather than it being the setting for a man on man fight between an intruder and his brother.

The crime scene techs were dusting for prints but Carl stopped them, much to Sam's relief. Their prints might (and he was stressing the word "might") not be in any system, but why take the chance and why put them back into a system to be found by someone else later. Carl stated he had houseguests and had had other company over the last few days so the question of prints would be a nightmare. The only moment of relief at the tense scene came when the field test of the blood came back.

"Someone's lost a pet," the man called out. "This is negative for human blood."

Sam sighed and felt his heart stutter for a moment at that. Still, it left him with a worrisome question: _Where was Dean?_

* * *

**oOoOoOo**


	5. Chapter 5

**oOoOoOo**

The wind, gusting fiercely at gale force every few minutes, slowed the ferry's approach and sent it rocking slowly against the pier. The loud sounds of the sides scraping the mighty bumpers was swallowed by the hungry moan of the air. The once sunny sky was growing dark with ominous, dirty clouds creeping across the steel gray water. Dean stood just outside the ferry area, watching the cars of the seasick passengers creep back to land and dart quickly for stable ground. The announcement over the PA at the docks could barely be heard cancelling the next voyage as the sea was considered too rough for the next run. Anyone on the island at that moment would have to be there for the rest of the night.

Dean caught the edges of the words and felt that claustrophobic feeling again. He jammed his hands deeply into his pockets and instantly regretted it. The pulsing pain in his wrist and ribs reminded him of cracked bones in the sore and swelling areas.

He was weary and he hurt. He had walked the seven miles to the car landing in Edgartown. Heeding Sam's warning, Dean opted not to steal one of Carl's neighbor's cars—although it would have been easy, they had so ,many. Like with Ana Crawford's neighbor, apparently weekday and weekend cars were normal; there were a few garages that he passed which made him wonder with a scowl if there were nighttime cars and daytime cars as well.

Dean did not mind growing up poor. He knew it helped him, forced him actually, to learn self-reliance (and some necessary pick pocketing and other petty theft skills) needed to survive in hunting. Had his mother lived, he would have grown up in a middle class family in a suburb. He gave up on thoughts like that ages ago, like leaving behind little boy hopes of becoming a baseball star or believing in Santa Claus (something he was forced to do at age four). Sam was still thinking those things were possible.

Okay, maybe not the baseball and Santa Claus bit—the kid saw no value in sports as a rule (and Dean disagreed with his brother that Scrabble and chess were sports; hell, even poker was not a sport to Dean) and Dean trampled all over the Santa lie the day he ruined Sam's childhood by telling him monsters were real. Dean hated himself a bit for that still. Maybe if he'd been able to give the kid just a few more months of blissful ignorance things might have gone easier for Sam. Dean sighed, relegating that wish to the charred pile of fuck ups on his failure list; the kid had deserved a better caretaker than an inept and insensitive brother.

But Sam's innocence (and there really was no other word for him in Dean's book, apocalypse and demon blood be damned) was breaking through the kid's flimsy hunter armor again. Even now Sam still thought the life with the house and a family could exist, a life without hunting and without knowing everyone you ever cared about is going to be killed (and it will likely be your own fault). The possibility of a good life, Dean knew, was the real fantasy and fairy tale, but if Sammy needed to hear that his big brother believed it was possible in order to get through these trials, and damn it Dean was going to keep telling him it so.

_And the kid thinks he knows when I'm lying_, Dean scoffed and eyed the next round of cars leaving the ferry in search of one familiar face.

The cars slid by, drivers looking jittery after their rocky ride across the sound. None stopped or waved to the man in the dark blue jacket slowly getting hypothermia by the curb. The cold bit into Dean, but being in pain was helpful sometimes—at least the physical kind of pain. The one that stabbed at him from his thoughts and memories was another kind of agony that no drug, no amount of alcohol, no amount of unconsciousness rendered by a blow could alleviate.

Thoughts of Sam failing at the trials (being hurt or worse killed by them) or even completing them only to have the resounding disappointment of life not changing sent sickening chills through Dean. He needed to protect Sam from that as well as the physical dangers, but he wasn't sure how.

Sam could believe in the possibility of a 'happy'ish everafter'ish' because he'd never knew it to begin with and when he thought he found it, he was already wise to the dangers around him. Sam had his four years at college—four years of normal, like Dean had. Only Sam's burden was worse, Dean figured. He was an adult when his shot at a regular life, the universe's cruel tease to his little brother, was snuffed out by a demon and a fire. Sam could remember and was conscious of what was going on around him during the four years before Jess died. He knew the whole time how lucky he was to have it, and he cherished each moment of it. Dean hadn't. He was a little boy and, like greedy clueless children do, he squandered his time of happiness out of ignorance. But that was a stroke of good fortune in his mind. He had the benefit of being oblivious that life could be any other way as he was just a child. He knew nothing different until it was all ripped away from him in a matter of moments on November night nearly 30 years earlier.

He did what he could to protect his little brother and letting him delude himself, supporting the crazy idea that they could get some of that back, was a small price to pay for the kid's spirits not to drop lower than a sewer. He noted Sam getting a little nostalgic lately, asking more about their parents in better times, trying to sift through Dean's memories for something to hang onto, as if some memory would help him get through this, but Dean resisted. He always resisted. His father taught him very quickly that those memories would just hurt because there was no chance they'd ever get that time back. Dean did as he was ordered and he locked them away. It was one lock Sam was never able to pick. Only Dean could open it and that just wasn't going to happen.

Dean was pulled from his dark ruminations by the toot of a horn. A white Jeep pulled up alongside the curb and the window rolled down to spill the sounds of C+C Music Factory into the gusty air.

"Man, have you gone all island on me?" Garth asked with a wide and happy grin.

"All island?" Dean remarked hunching his shoulders against the biting wind scraping off the Atlantic.

"Look at you: All the windswept hair and sun-kissed cheeks," Garth grinned excitedly.

Dean scowled and reminded himself that he was the one who called on Garth so beating him senseless would serve no purpose… and he'd feel bad about it later; it would be like kicking the crap out of one of the characters in Bambi (the Disney one, not the porn one Dean preferred where Bambi was a blond college freshman cheerleader).

"My hair isn't long enough to be swept—that's Sammy's deal," Dean growled. "And this is windburn, Garth. It's blowing at like 30 knots right now."

"Oh, I guess it is," the scrawny hunter grinned and bobby his head. "So, tell me about our Haitian Voodoo spirit."

Dean grimaced and stalked around to the passenger side of the Jeep. There were not many people waiting in this area, but the idea of discussing murderous spirits and voodoo rituals in public was always a bad one in Dean's opinion and training.

"Where's Sam?" Garth asked as Dean slammed the door with a wince as he gripped his side. "Are you okay?"

"No, first question, are you nuts stealing a car and bringing it here?" he asked.

Dean had noted the Massachusetts license plates on the vehicle. Stealing a car was part of the trade; he had done it many times himself. Still, bringing one to an island—and island in the same state—was a level of reckless he did not approve of unless there was a good cause. The normal 4-1-1 from a hunter just didn't meet that level.

"This belongs to my friend Bill from dental school," Garth assured him. "I should introduce you sometime; you'd like him. He lives in Falmouth, a few miles from the ferry. He's letting me borrow it since he was coming to the island for the night anyway; look, he's event got a pass so I'm permitted to drive her on the island. We are completely legal right now… as long as no one looks in the back and sees my gear. I should probably cover it up, huh?"

Dean glared at him. Garth's answers and assurances were offered with the same tone and level of caution one would show when trying to talk a toddler into trying to eat lima beans for the first time.

"Now, you didn't answer my question," Garth persisted in a friendly and concerned voice. "Why aren't you with Sam? You two aren't fighting again, are you? Do I have to call one or both of you idgits?"

Dean rolled his eyes and shook his head as he snapped his fingers and pointed Garth to the main road. As the Jeep moved into traffic, Dean shook his head.

"We're fine and please don't even try to Dr. Phil us," Dean commanded. "He's not happy we drew this case, but I kind of agree with him there. In fact…"

Dean paused and sighed guiltily.

"What didn't you tell him?" Garth asked. "Does he know you've got busted ribs?"

Dean grimaced. He looked at Garth and remembered why he called the squirrelly guy for help. Garth was weird. He was off-beat and dorky and probably shouldn't ever hunt without a lot of help, but he did know a lot and was open to a lot. He also had pretty much no temper and couldn't hold a grudge even if you duct taped it to him.

"He's knows, but that's not what's going to set him off," Dean replied with a wary chuckle. "He's gonna be a little pissed I didn't tell him what this might be."

The answer came to Dean when he was with Sam, eating lunch. He didn't mention it simply because he wasn't sure and didn't want to deal with his little brother's bitchface or run the risk of Sam benching him for the rest of the hunt until they could summon reinforcements. Calling in Garth was just moving the process along in Dean's mind. Now, he would tell Sam, the kid would bitch, and they could get down to work without losing valuable hours on arguing and stewing.

"So you're still thinking Loa?" Garth asked, recalling their conversation several hours earlier.

"Yeah," Dean nodded. "I know, crazy considering where we are but…"

"Crazy is what we do, mi amigo," Garth nodded firmly. "You've got some experience with something like this."

"Not exactly," Dean replied. "I nearly crossed paths with one back in 2005. The possibility of it hit me as I was eating lunch."

Garth nodded. Dean had explained his sudden epiphany that occurred as he put ketchup on his burger. The splat of the red liquid hit the bun and he had a quick memory flash that told him why the voodoo symbols on the wall at Ana Crawford's house looked familiar.

"What's Sam gonna say when you tell him you kept all this from him?" Garth wondered.

"It doesn't matter," Dean said. "He'll sulk and bitch, but we'll work through that."

"And by working through it you mean what?" Garth asked skeptically. "What you usually do by avoiding the discussion, harboring resentment and guilt and then let it fester until one or both of you blow up and then apologize for acting like a couple jackasses?"

"Yeah," Dean nodded in a confident carefree manner. "Pretty much."

"Idgits," Garth sighed then felt Dean's heavy, disapproving gaze on him. He shrugged in submission then nodded his head as he turned the car out of the center of town. "I'm down with that."

**oOoOoOo**

The crime scene crew pulled out. The patrol cars and the ambulance left. Sam was left with Carl and a house in disarray.

And no Dean.

Sam tried the phone again. It had been an hour since he arrived to see the blood sigil on the wall and tried to raise Dean on his phone. Carl was proving excessively unhelpful in his efforts to figure out where Dean might be.

Not that the guy had a lot of freedom to do anything. He had just dismissed his investigators from his house proclaiming this mess was the work of vandals. If he suddenly put in a report that one of his houseguests was missing, that would raise all sorts of questions. The kind of questions the Winchester's tried to avoid and an APB on Dean would simply not end well no matter what.

If this was the work of something supernatural, there were none of the obvious indications. There was no sulfur; there was no ectoplasm. There was no attachment of the ghostly children in Ana Crawford's basement to Carl's house. They could not have traveled across the island from one dwelling to another. Which left the possibility of something more human (but equally diabolical) at work.

Dean, injured, and at the mercy of some psycho with a voodoo fettish? The thought turned Sam's stomach and sent him pacing around the room again, feeling both a rage and an impotence at the same time. He wondered if this was how his brother felt when Sam was kidnapped by the loony and murderous Bender family all those years ago.

"Here," Carl said, handing Sam Ana Crawford's diary, the one Dean was supposed to be there reading. "I found that under the couch. There's, uh, something in there that you should read."

Carl's eyes then drifted to the menacing marks on his wall. He grew pale and sighed heavily. Sam flipped open the pages and skimmed them, deciphering the dead woman's scrolling and loopy handwriting. There was mention of a spell and the ghosts and how this was supposed to help her get her bed and breakfast back on track. He was just getting into the meat of the diary when the front door opened and a voice sounded in the room that nearly dropped Sam to his knees with relief.

"Holy crap, you guys starting a new show called Voodoo Crashers?" Dean observed as he walked into the living room to stare at the new wall decoration.

"Dean!" Sam gasped and quickly crossed the space to his brother. He threw his long, powerful arms around Dean and hugged him tightly. His arms shook with relief and the last dregs of fear leaving his body.

"Ow, Sammy," Dean gasped as he struggled to break the hold. "Ribs. Broken ribs, remember?"

"Sorry," he said quickly and scanned his brother for any other signs of obvious discomfort. "Are you okay? What happened? Where were you?"

His last question came out in a shout that wreaked of anger and frustration. Dean did not respond directly. Instead, he looked more carefully at the wall.

"Well, I wasn't here when this happened," Dean grimaced as he took in the symbols. "Cat blood? Or did someone around here lose a prize poodle?"

"We just know that it's animal, not human," Carl said suspiciously. "We had to run a test. How did you know?"

"Crime scene tape is down," Dean said staring at the symbols as he cradled his wrist in his good hand. The throbbing was increasing. "If it was human blood this would be off limits because your CSI geeks would be all over this place. Since they are apparently gone, I'm guessing this isn't considered felony central right now. So you're calling this, what, vandalism?"

"Basically," Carl shrugged. "News guys are gonna have a field day. Luckily, they don't know about the similar painting at Ana's. They'll make some guesses that they're related, but I'll have my guys claim this is the work of some local rich brats pulling a prank. I'll be a punchline in town for a few weeks, but I'd rather put up with that than let this… thing stay on my island."

"You can keep this that quiet?" Dean wondered.

"Yeah, I guess," Carl scowled with a heavy sight. "As long you can deal with whatever did this, then the worst of it for me will be that I just had this place repainted last summer."

"Don't bother to just repaint it," Dean shook his head still studying the design. "Rip out the drywall and replace all of it."

Sam sighed in frustration as he stepped in front of Dean blocking the wall. He really didn't care about question of clean up or remodeling.

"Where were you?" he asked. His relief at finding Dean alive and well was fading fast as his anger bubbled to the surface again.

Dean did not reply. He stepped around Sam and continued his survey of the red mural scarring the wall. It was slightly different than the one at Ana Crawford's but there were several aspects of it that were the same. The one in her house was a summoning sigil, that much Dean knew. This one was an announcement, a warning. Dean felt a chill, like icy fingers, trace down his spine as Sam pulled him to the far side of the room near the doors to the deck, then dropped a hard and angry glare on him. He was careful not to cause Dean any additional pain, but his grip on him was firm.

"How much do you trust Carl?" he asked suddenly in a quiet and intense voice.

"Why?" Dean wondered.

"Oh, I don't know," Sam huffed in an exasperated tone. "Maybe because this is deep, nasty voodoo and he apparently knows about this stuff, but just happened to call you for help."

"Because he knows a few things he heard and read but also knows he's in over his head," Dean replied unconcerned with this brother's accusation. "Pasty, white dough boy gets dropped into the 9th Ward just after a hurricane turns the city into something out of the Walking Dead. You learn what you need to learn to survive, Sammy. Besides, he told us that he's done some research since then. It's like I inspired him. I'm his Obi Wan."

"Yeah, Obi Wan's star pupil went dark side, Dean," Sam reminded him. "And since when has anyone who started digging into the occult all on their own without responsible guidance ever turned out to be a good thing?"

"You worry too much, you know that?" Dean patted him on the shoulder.

"Dean," Sam seethed. "Do not blow this off as nothing. You're worried. I can tell. Don't act otherwise."

Dean shrugged then nodded.

"But I trust, Carl," he said.

"Like you trust Benny?" Sam asked sharply.

He regretted the words as soon as they tumbled over his lips. His older brother's expressive green eyes went from mildly frustrated to cold and hurt in a snap. Sam stood by his opinion of his brother's "war buddy" from Purgatory. Benny was a monster and no matter what arguments Dean offered, that never changed. Sure, Dean had cut off the bromance with the fang, but Sam knew the guy's number was still in Dean's phone. Sam looked back, trying not to antagonize more than his words had already. In truth, he didn't mean to cause Dean more pain. It was just that Dean was keeping something from him, Sam could sense it. Then, top it off with the hour of worry and panic he felt not knowing where Dean was and it did not put Sam in the calmest frame of mind.

Dean, however, didn't seem to care his brother was upset. He set his jaw firmly as he glared back at Sam and left no doubt he was not discussing Benny. The subject right now was Carl.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Guy saves your ass, you form a certain bond."

"You haven't talked to Carl in years," Sam offered, trying to drag the conversation back to safer ground.

"So?" Dean challenged.

"So, a lot could have changed," his brother replied, trying to sound reasonable rather than confrontational, but the damage was done.

"Yeah," Dean nodded and offered him a cold and hurt look. "I know how that goes."

Dean's cold gaze stung Sam. He bit back a salty retort and reminded himself hitting Dean, particularly when he was already hurt, would only make both of them feel worse. Instead, he returned to his earlier inquiry.

"Are you going to tell me where you were?" Sam asked. "Why wasn't your cell phone on?"

Dean looked at him oddly. He gingerly fished the phone out of his pocket. He looked up at his brother guiltily.

"My bad," Dean answered. "I took a nap and set the alarm. I guess I turned the whole phone off when it woke me up."

Dean then shrugged and sighed as the last of the panic tension bled out of Sam. He reminded himself that Dean was back, not exactly unharmed as he was nursing several broken bones, but certainly not the victim of some random psycho. With thoughts about that, Sam again looked at the diary in his hands.

He flipped through the pages and read a few more passages that created a knot in his gut. He hung his head and prepared to deliver the finding to his brother when he spotted him looking from Carl to the wall and nodding. Carl was doing the same, although the police chief's face had a sick and scared look on it that was much deeper than it had been when he first thought his home was a crime scene.

"What is it?" Sam asked, watching an unspoken conversation arch between his brother and the police chief.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Carl shook his head as his face grew pale with fright.

"Damn it," Dean sighed as his shoulders drooped. He scrubbed his uninjured hand across his face. "This so cannot be happening."

"What?" Sam asked anxiously. "What is it?"

Dean pulled a dire and guilty face as he looked back at his brother. His own complexion was a shade lighter than it's normal fair appearance. His eyes were creased with worry.

"Loa," he replied simply.

"Loa?" Sam repeated then clenched his jaw as the notes in the diary screamed back at him. "Loa?! As in…"

"As in a NOLA bitch," Carl spat.

"A what?" Sam remarked, staring at the man sharply.

"Well, that's what Dean called it the last time," he shrugged. "NOLA, short for New…"

"Orleans, Louisiana," Sam cut in and finished the statement. "Yeah, got that. I'm familiar with Dean speak. When did you tangle with a Loa, Dean?"

"It was a few years ago," he shrugged. "You were still at school."

That struck a chord in Sam's memory. His brother arrived unannounced (and uninvited) in Sam's apartment in Palo Alto in the dead of night around Halloween in 2005. When he was questions about why he was not with their father, Dean merely stated he had been in the Big Easy on a gig of his own. They had never discussed the specifics of that hunt because their father's disappearance was of greater concern and then Jess died and their endless roadtrip began. Sam had always wondered what Dean was up to specifically on the trip prior to his arrival in Palo Alto, but it never seemed important enough to question given everything that happened thereafter.

"Okay, so time to play your least favorite game: Remember When," Sam began aggressively. "What's going on, Dean? Is this is about your 'voodoo thing in New Orleans'? What exactly were you doing when Dad took off in 2005?"

"I had a case," Dean said. "Post hurricane problem. Katrina stirred up some stuff, and I got a call from Caleb that someone should check it out. So I did."

"And you wound up messing around with a Loa?" Sam roared at the insanity of it. His brother now, he could see doing something that deadly. Dean then? That seemed unbelievable. "By yourself?! Dean, are you insane? No, wait, don't respond to that. I know the answer: You are!"

"He always this twitchy?" Carl asked to the side.

"_Meh_, it comes and it goes," Dean waggled his uninjured hand giving a so-so gesture. "It's like he gets his period. He's a little under the weather and off his game lately so…"

"Dean," Sam seethed, not at the explanation so much as the topic of the supernatural creature at hand.

"I wasn't by myself," Dean replied and jerked his thumb in the cop's direction. "I had Carl."

"Yeah," Carl nodded. "I had his six, and we took care of the problem. Right? We did, didn't we?"

Dean nodded firmly then caught his brother's disbelieving gaze.

"We did," he said confidently shooting Sam a dagger glare.

"Dean, can I talk to you?" Sam asked stiffly. "Alone?"

Carl shrugged and wandered off a bit, leaving the Winchesters some space to air whatever was about to blow up between them. Dean cradled his sore arm and waited for Sam's lecture.

"Anything you want to tell me?" Sam began.

"You need a haircut and should maybe considering cutting back on the caffeine," Dean shrugged. "Also, it wouldn't kill you to eat red meat once in a while."

"I mean about New Orleans?" Sam said through gritted teeth.

Dean grinned and nodded.

"Beware of the beggars and enjoy the loose women," he winked and clapped his brother soundly on the arm.

"Loa, Dean," Sam snapped. "You tangled with a Loa on your own? No hunter backing you up? What were you thinking?"

"That there was some nasty-nasty going on in the Big Easy that needed a little hoodoo to combat the bad voodoo, oh, and that I had it under control," Dean said easily. "Look, it wasn't actually a Loa, Sam. It was a mambo trying to summon one as a last ditch effort. She was working some serious curse magic and needed a little boost to get the job done so she tried to summon a Loa. I took care of her before she could do it."

Sam blinked several times and tried to think of a more logical explanation for what his brother said than the one that sprung to his mind. When none would surface, he asked the question.

"How?" he inquired simply.

"How what?" Dean replied with a mystified expression.

"The mambo, regardless of what she was doing, was a human, Dean," Sam whispered harshly.

Dean shook his head and scoffed. He glared back at his brother and offered him a cold, acidic tone in his reply.

"She still, is, Sam," he said. "What? You think I killed her? Hey, I'm not nearly as nice as I used to be, but even today, I wouldn't ventilate a person for…."

Sam relented and sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a settling breath. He should have known. In his worry over the possibility there was a vengeful demigod in Dean's past that was not fully vanquished, his mind jumped to some worst-case scenarios. Why wouldn't he seeing that so much of the Winchester's lives were played out in that fashion?

He realized his mistake quickly.

There was a line that Dean would not cross. It was a fine line (you had to really squint to see it sometimes), but he wouldn't harm a human unless there was no way to avoid it. He might have an aggressive streak and be better at killing creatures than he was at a lot of other things, but killing people did not come easy to him even after everything both brothers had gone through. Reminding himself that his brother's New Orleans adventure was years earlier, when Dean was just getting started on hunting solo made that possibility that he killed a human even more remote. Sam turned apologetic eyes to Dean.

"I know," he sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Not that I wasn't sorely tempted," Dean growled, removing Sam's feelings of guilt. "Especially if she set her friggin' snake on me again with that…"

"Dean, focus," Sam offered, dragging his attention back to the matter at hand.

"Did you really think I would have killed her?" his brother asked. "She's a person, Sam. A real bitch, granted, but a human bitch…"

"I said I'm sorry," Sam cut him off. "Okay, so you stopped her from working the spell. And then what?"

"Then I hauled ass out of town once I got Dad's message and realized he was seriously off the radar," Dean shrugged. "So what?"

"That's my question," Sam shrugged. "Is that all? You just left? Nothing else happened?"

"No," Dean shook his head. "Carl and I spoke to Thereze, and he said '_ki sa se bon'_ so we…"

"I'm sorry," Sam shook his head and blinked hard. "She said what?"

"It's all good," Dean translated in replied with a shrug. "It's Creole."

Sam looked hard at his brother and blinked in disbelief.

"You speak Creole?" Sam wondered.

"I understand it a bit," Dean shrugged as Carl wandered back in their direction and rejoined the conversation.

This surprised Sam. Not because he did not think his brother smart enough. No, what surprised him was Dean's admission of the knowledge. His older brother liked to play dumb quite often and approached a lot in life with a basic bluntness that many people mistook for a lack of intelligence, but his younger brother knew the truth. Dean was, frankly, brilliant. Sam truly believed he was a genius; Dean was just not overly educated in the classic sense. He was analytical and quite skilled in his Socratic approach to arguments (which would likely surprise Dean because Sam was certain the guy had never read any Greek philosophy). Dean hid many parts of himself, but Sam knew they existed. The guy who claimed to just watch internet porn and prefer to hang out in bars to hustle women and pool somehow found the time to read anything written by Kurt Vonnegut, which wasn't something an intellectual slouch would do. Despite not speaking the language, he watched a Spanish speaking soap opera and understood the characters and the plot just fine, seeming to grasp the finer points of the story not just the obvious bits from the physical acting. While Sam knew he himself was smart, beyond just smart but in the category of scary smart, much of his came from work. He studied hard and fed his innate curiosity with more reading and studying. Dean never did that. He just seemed to learn through osmosis.

Verifying Sam's suspicion, Carl spoke up.

"You pick up a bit here and there if you hang around enough," Carl offered with a knowing smirk. "Dean and Thereze spent a bit of time together so I'm not surprised he got a little culture while he, uh, got a little something else."

_Dean, a hunt and a hook up_, Sam mused wearily, _the classic hunting trifecta._ He shook his head and sighed.

"Thereze?" Sam asked, for the sake of filling in the hunt's details—while hoping the ones he got were case related and not just those that stuck out in his brother's memory for pleasure reasons.

Dean smiled, making Sam worry that his fears of too much information were not unfounded, as he looked into the distance, both geographically and temporally. It was a wistful and contented look—the kind Dean rarely sported any more.

"Oh yeah," he nodded. "Good times."

Sam's exasperation was evident. Carl shook his head and filled in the details. Thereze Longchamp was a hoodoo practitioner—part-time. She was also a real estate agent, full-time, in New Orleans, who assisted them on the case.

"Plus," Dean offered still grinning, "she was a dancer—ballet—went to school for it even. Dude, she could put her leg clear over…"

"I get the picture," Sam said, cutting off his reverie.

"Me, too," Dean nodded. "Ooo. Now, that is something worth dreaming about." He paused as he felt Sam's heavy glare on him. "Right, so, it started out as a case about a curse. Then it escalated when the mother of the guy killed by the curse retaliated. She was heavy into the dark stuff. Long story short, it turned into a hunt for a revenant and Momma Bitch Witch tried to summon a Loa to finish things off."

Carl's stomach suddenly growled loudly, offering it's memories and two cents to the discussion.

"Man, I could go for some Étouffée," Carl said.

"Me, too," Dean nodded. "What was that other thing she made us? The thing with the…"

"Guys!" Sam scoffed. "Hello. Loa problem!"

"Wow," Carl raised his eyebrows to Dean. "I see now what you meant."

"Yeah, and I've been working on him for years," Dean said out of the corner of his mouth. "This is actually huge improvement." Sam scowled deeply causing Dean to shake his head. "Alright, so '05 Memory Lane is now closed. Back to Fantasy Island here. Loa. Huh. That's… a problem. Maybe."

He chewed his lip and scrunched his brow in uncertainty.

"Maybe, Dean?" Sam rolled his eyes. "How about: Yes, huge problem."

"Only if it is one," his brother pointed out. "And we don't know that it is for certain yet."

"The sigils, Dean," Sam shook his head. "They blow our theory of just a some child spirits out of the water. Oh, and Ana's diary, the one you were supposed to read rather than nap, confirms it! She put the sigil on her wall to summon a Loa to deal with her problem in the basement. And now this!"

He pointed angrily at the wall, but he was interrupted in that instant by a tapping on the sliding glass door to the deck. The unexpected knock gathered their collective attention. Pressing his face to the glass to peer inside, Garth stood on the deck waving at them in a jubilant manner.

"Oh yeah," Dean offered, "guess who I found at the ferry dock?"

"Hey there, Sam!" Garth grinned widely on the other side of the glass.

Dean nodded to Carl, signaling it was okay to let the man in. Carl gave him raised eyebrows but obeyed. Garth bounced into the room, his stringy arms stuffed into his pockets as he hunched against the cold.

"I parked the car a few blocks back," he said to Dean with a conspiratorial nod. "Keeping it all low profile, just like you asked. Don't want the local Po-Po any wiser, right?"

"Garth," Dean sighed and nodded to Carl, "meet Police Chief Carl Whitney."

Garth winced then shrugged. He then quickly offered up his hand with a broad grin. Carl accepted it with good grace, which was more positive than Sam's reaction.

"You called in Garth?" Sam noted and turned an accusing look to his brother.

"He called me," Dean said then mumbled the rest, "after I left him a message."

"Want to restate your opinion that this is a simple hunt and doesn't involve a Loa?" Sam sniped. "Or are you going to claim you just miss getting hugs from him?"

"Everybody needs a little love sometimes, Sammy," Dean said then shrugged sluggishly, still wincing under the pain in his side. "Okay, so maybe I was a little concerned we were in Loa territory. Look, we don't know that it's here. Maybe it's like my last go around: Ana simply tried to do it and failed."

"You really believe that?" Sam asked.

Dean sighed then shook his head as Garth came forward to greet Sam. He threw his arms around the taller of the Winchester's and squeezed him tightly. Sam grew rigid but patted his fellow hunter kindly on the back.

"So the three musketeers back together again," Garth said, releasing Sam as he clapped his hands and grinned widely.

"More like the three stooges," Sam grumbled.

"Oh, ho!" Garth laughed. "I love Shemp."

"That explains a lot," Dean grimaced.

"So, we gonna talk some Loa action or what?" Garth wondered, bobbing is head eagerly.

* * *

**oOoOoOo**


	6. Chapter 6

**oOoOoOo**

Garth opened his bag and spread several books and some computer print outs on the kitchen table. The others gathered around it, like thieves studying building plans before a heist. Sam gripped Ana's diary tightly in his hand, knowing he held a dire clue but still hoping Garth would say something which would render it moot.

"Okay, well, I did some research and called a few people, and confirmed what we suspected: You can't kill a Loa," Garth shook his head.

"Why not?" Carl asked. "Dean, last time you…"

Dean, standing to Garth's left while still cradling his ribs cautiously, stared at the pages on the table and shook his head slowly.

"No, I just stopped one from being summoned," he corrected.

"What's the difference?" Carl asked.

"It's the difference between slamming the door in someone's face…," Sam began.

"And slamming them in the face with a shot from a bazooka," Dean continued. "Oh, and one of them is considered better manners. I always forget which."

"The bazooka definitely," Garth nodded. "Loa can be vain and sensitive or kind and compassionate, depending on which one you're dealing with. Now, Carl, you were in New Orleans just after Hurricane Katrina, right?"

The police chief shuddered at the mention of the devastating storm as he nodded.

"Yeah, I was called in to help restore order and that's how I ran into Dean here," Carl recalled and cringed at the memory. "Man, remember how we took a dip in Lake Ponchartrain, should I say _Lake_ _Ponch-a-toxic,_ when we hauled ass away from that damn zombie."

"Good times," Dean offered casually.

Sam cut his eyes at his brother in a scolding look, but Dean's attention was still focused on the table.

"Right," Carl shuddered. "My skin was raw for a week like I'd been licked by a fire after that acid bath. Hell, I'll probably get cancer from it."

Dean shrugged.

"Worse ways to go," he remarked as he looked up and caught his younger brother's sour expression.

Sam impassive face scowled in worry and frustration. Dean gave a half eye roll stood, but his focus was intense and unwavering on the documents, or so it seemed. Sam started to wonder if that was truly the case. His brother stood in a closed and protective posture making Sam suspect if he was focusing more on the past than anything in front of him. It was as if he suspected (or perhaps knew and feared) what Garth might say next based on his memories of the gig in New Orleans. Sam was clueless as to what it might be as his brother refused to share. If whatever he knew or suspect scared Dean, then Sam felt justified in the sudden clench of apprehension in his stomach.

"I'd done a little research with Bobby before, and I think the one you wouldn't let RSVP in New Orleans was probably Belie Belcan," Garth said.

As he said the name, Dean visibly bit the inside of his cheek. His fingers dug deeply into his biceps as his eyes grew hard. Garth noted the reaction as well as Sam did.

"I'm guessing you figured that out at some point," Garth ventured.

"Years later," Dean admitted. "The bitch, the one who tried to summon him, wasn't trying for him, but from what happened when she tired, it looked like that was who was going to show up, or so Bobby thought."

"She was looking for a soldier Loa," Carl offered, nodding vigorously. "That's what you said then, right?"

"Yeah, Captain Debas," Dean said, then looked to Sam to fill him in on a few details. "Loa of the Ghede, sent by the Barons to harvest souls."

"Typical Loa behavior," Sam nodded. "As long as the souls were ready to go."

Dean nodded. Sam could read the word "yahtzee" in his brother's expression as he grimaced. The early departure of some souls for nefarious purpose was evidently the evil acts that drew a hunter to the disaster- ravaged region all those years ago. Whoever the Mambo behind Dean's hunt had been, she had been killing people using dark magic—the kind that had a tendency to slip from its leash and start biting anything that crossed it's path. Throwing a Loa in the mix, even one that allegedly only took orders from the Barons (those Voodoo guardians of the spirit world who decided who died and who lived) was seriously playing with matches next to an open gas can.

"So this Jelly Belly guy," Carl began but was oddly cut off by a terse correction from Dean.

"Belie Belcan," he said coldly.

Sam eyed his brother carefully. Dean was not one to find fault with bobbling the names of monsters or even taunting their mothers. It was a minor sport with him.

"Right, him," Carl continued. "They're soldiers who take and follow orders, right?"

"Well, Captain Debas and Belie Belcan are both soldiers in a way," Garth said. "One is more of a foot soldier—the Captain, like the one your Mambo in New Orleans tried to call. The one who nearly showed up is more of a…"

"Dick," Dean scoffed. "So is his boss."

Sam looked from his brother to Garth, an unspoken but two-way conversation occurring between them. What they were saying precisely was a mystery, but what bothered Sam as much as his brother's stern and threatening expression was Garth's moist, sympathetic expression in return. The scrawny hunter turned his gaze to the younger Winchester; his shoulders drooped as he filled in details.

"Not all Loa are actual Loa, as we think of them anyway," Garth explained. "Some are. They're demigods who have some interaction with humans. Others are actually reapers, good ones and rogue ones, who use that mythology to make their work easier for them. And then there are the '_other'_ others. The leading research today indicates they're…"

"Angels," Sam surmised and sighed heavily. His brother's curled lip expression made more sense now.

Dean had plenty of dislike for most supernatural creatures, but angels had topped his list for disgust for a long time due to their overwhelming power, arrogance and the near impossibility to kill them. Of course, in typical Dean fashion, his closest friend happened to be one as well.

"Belie Belcan is an angel?" Sam surmised.

"I think so," Garth nodded. "Obviously, Dean thinks so, too. The problem wasn't Belie so much as who he represents."

"Represents?" Carl wondered. "Like he's the guy's agent or lawyer or something? Who is his boss, Kanye?"

"His boss? That's not a bad way to think about it," Garth brightened quickly.

"His boss is more of a douche than Kanye," Dean muttered.

"Belie Belcan is a defender of justice among the Loa, like their patron saint of that virtue," Garth continued unhindered. "He is said to protect his followers from evil and all enemies in the hereafter."

"He doesn't sound so bad," Sam remarked. "What's the catch?"

"Michael," Dean said quickly as his fiery and resentful gaze burned into Sam's eyes. "Belie Belcan is some cover ID for one of the Archangel's ass monkeys."

Garth nodded his agreement and explained he was told this by Bobby several years earlier, just as the apocalypse was getting interesting. The old hunter knew about Dean's New Orleans stint from Caleb and had always been bothered by the fact the wrong Loa nearly appeared. That just didn't happen. Either the right one, the one summoned, manifested or nothing did. There was no last minute substitution. After looking into the details provided to him, Bobby explained to Garth that he happened upon the information about Loa being alter egos for some angels and the Michael connection fell into place.

"You think he made a play for you then?" Sam asked.

"I have no idea," Dean shook his head. "Might just be a coincidence, although, when in our friggin' lives does that ever happen? I just knew something wasn't right. Not that it matters; we shut that operation down in 2005 and Colonel Dickhead is stuck in Satan's box wearing our brother Adam. What's any of that got to do with what's happening now?"

Sam shrugged and looked to Garth. He had provided the hunter with the information he and Carl found in Ana Crawford's diary, hoping that would help fill in the pieces here. Apparently, for Garth, it did.

"Everything and sort of nothing at the same time," Garth explained with a giddy giggle. "When Heaven lost its CEO after you and Sam locked the Blues Brother's in the cage, there was no one left to mind the store upstairs really, right? Well, that sort of had a whole domino effect on the supernatural side of things. Creatures hunting out of their elements and habitats—you must have noticed it."

Both brothers nodded. Werewolves hunting outside of a lunar cycle. Skinwalkers dwelling above ground. Creatures from all over the planet showing up thousands of miles from their normal locales. Then there was the current off-the-wall behavior of Castiel. Something wasn't right in Whoville still both brothers were certain. It was as if the whole universe got turned on its head and stayed that way when the Winchester's derailed the Apocalypse.

"Well, the Barons lost some control, too," Garth shrugged confirming that suspicion. "The Loa are hard to manage normally and then you throw in a little instability and you are looking for someone to step off the reservation. I mean, normally, Loa are kind of like college kids at spring break that never ends. It's all wet T-shirt contests and funnel drinks, but now things are a bit of a mess and no one has called them back to class. Don't you see? They're run amok, well, some of them anyway. The Barons haven't wrestled control of them back, and seeing as not all of them are real Loa, there's only so much they can do in the first place. The ones that are real Loa, they've gotten confused and a little… righteous, I guess you'd say. Can't say as I blame them; it's like no one's around to keep things under control they way they have for centuries. A few of them are casting around for something to do. They can't show up here without being summoned and most people aren't strong enough or dumb enough to do it, but in this instance…"

The wind outside suddenly picked up, rattling the doors and windows as it pelted the house with rain again. The skies grew darkly ominious and sucked more of the light from the room.

"Ana tried and apparently succeeded," Sam said.

"She wanted to get rid of the Kids in the Hall so she tried to summon help," Dean shook his head as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Awesome."

"Essentially," Garth nodded. "Now, I looked up the spell you got out of that diary and gave me over the phone, Dean, the one you think your victim cast. Pistachios, black rooster feathers, plantain peels, cigar ash and white spiced rum are the leading ingredients before you add in the colts foot, horehound, Damiana and comfey leaves. That sounds to me like she was trying to call Ghede Nibo."

"Nimfo?" Dean asked, a slight smile quirking the corner of his mouth.

Sam glared at him, sending him the dagger glare that let him know this was not the time for humor or a foray into the possible delights of a sexually promiscuous supernatural creature. Dean caught the look and scowled but said nothing more.

"Nibo," Garth corrected with a smile. "He's a bit of a metro-sexual spirit—definitely an actual Loa, too. He possesses humans to do some pretty kinky things, all in the name of enjoyment or fun. He's also a favorite used for the 'getting to know you' thing some people try to do with spirits in their house. He's an intermediary between the living and the dead so he can help you with your friendly neighborhood haunting—or so people believe. He can facilitate communication between your dead houseguests and you."

In that instant, Dean's phone sounded, filling the room and breaking everyone's intense concentration. He scowled, looked at the display and shot a concerned look at Sam. He mouthed the word "Kevin" then stepped quickly out of the room. Sam looked at him with concern, but returned his focus on this hunt and this problem. He was concerned about Kevin's call, but calmed considerably when he spied Dean standing in the hall rolling his eyes at whatever the prophet was rambling on about.

"So Ana called this guy to evict the dead kids in the coal bin," Carl nodded, seeing where the discussion was going. "She called in her own ghostbuster, so to speak, but because there's no traffic cop on the other side anymore, it's a free-for-all and someone else got through and cleaned house more than necessary."

"Not necessarily," Garth said but was quickly interrupted by Sam. "Maybe this is Ghede Nibo's work."

"No, Garth, it's not," he offered. "Carl and I found this."

Sam handed him the pages attached to the police report. Garth read them and hung his head as he reached the end.

"Mariette, ooo, not good," Garth shook his head and looked like he had a sour lemon squeezed in his mouth as he frantically flipped pages in his book. Sam looked at him for a further explanation. "Bad ju-ju on this one, Sam. I mean, she's bad news any time, but right now, with both of you and Dean here and with everything a mess where she came from? Wow, this is so not the place for you to be. She's here without a tasking. That's bad with a capital D-E-A-D at the end."

Carl studied the pinched and worried looks the two hunters tossed between themselves. Garth continued to read his book, shaking his head an muttering as he dragged a bony finger along the pages. His expression became more tense with each passage he finished until finally he looked up with a pale and sunken expression. He turned the page to Sam who read it quickly, a chill creeping into his bones and a knot forming in his stomach. He looked up with worry greater than that on Garth's face.

Before he could speak, Dean returned, shaking his head and scowling. He sighed and rubbed his neck in frustration.

"Okay, seriously, when this whole tablet thing is done, you need to take that kid to Disneyworld or something," he said to Garth then added. "And you also need to work on your handwriting. That is, unless the frozen, wrapped parcel you left for him in the freezer really was Howler Dogs."

"What?" Sam asked, shaking his head at the absurd comment.

Dean sighed and shrugged while rolling his eyes.

"Kevin looked in the freezer and thought Garth was leaving him links of meat made of Howler Monkeys," he said in an exasperated tone. "I think I've got him convinced they are hotdogs, and he is not on a hidden camera episode of Bizarre Foods. So, what did we figure out while I was discussing the menu items from The Lion King Diner?"

Sam responded as he noted Garth's continued concern. His eyes grew more anxious as he looked at the elder Winchester.

"We think Mariette, a rogue Loa, is here without a purpose," Sam replied strategically, unsure how to wade into this one.

"So?" Dean shrugged. "We send her packing, right?"

"Well, it's not exactly that easy," Garth said. "Loa are hard to banish once they've manifested."

"She's like… us without a job," Sam explained. "She's hanging around and looking for something to do."

"Bitch Voodoo god is bored?" Dean surmised and shook his head. "Nice. So, what are we supposed to do until we can banish her? Get her a hobby? Sign her up for Pinterest?"

"She kind of only has one job," Garth offered hesitantly. "She's the Loa that drags souls to Hell."

Sam watched his brother tense. His shoulders moved up a fraction and there was the slightest contraction around his eyes. The muscle in the side of Dean's jaw jumped as his face grew stony and hard.

"She's a spirit on steroids, not a demon," he said.

"True, but that's still what she does, Dean," Sam replied as his eyes filled with concern.

"So what, she's a subcontractor?" Dean shook his head. "Well, this whole island is Thurston Howell, lockjaw snooty heaven. Someone here probably made a deal or two; and if someone here knew how to find the mojo to stop the clock on that deal, that might explain…

"…why she's still hanging around," Sam nodded in agreement. His voice was still tight and while he felt wretched doing it, he hoped his brother was right because the alternative was unthinkable. "You're right. She may have other possible victims. Good thinking."

Dean smiled and shrugged.

"Sometimes it happens," he noted in a self-deprecating tone.

The mood in the room lightened for a moment, but Sam pointedly would not look at Garth. He sensed more than he saw the other hunter slowly shaking his head in disagreement. Carl, however, was swiveling is looks between the two of them and offering up a pleading expression as his confusion swelled.

"So what now?" Carl asked. "We just need to figure out who's playing three card monte with their soul? What do we do? Dig for sudden proof of a windfall or simple outrageous fortune? Here? Guys, that's all there is here. These people wipe their kids noses with C-notes. Next, they're not all from here, so we would need to research the whole island."

Garth fixed his eyes firmly on Sam and gave him a pitying look. It said a lot: _Please stop. We're making this harder. We need to be honest. _While, rationally, Sam agreed with each of those sentiments, the fear bubbling in the pit of his stomach wanted to put off the inevitable for a bit longer.

"Or their entire family's history," Dean said, dejectedly, noting the futility of the suggestion. "It's like Carl said, everyone here is rolling in it. A lot of this is old money. Who knows how they actually got it or kept it. I mean, every other person in this country is living paycheck to paycheck and these bastards… I mean, a weekday car and a weekend car? Who lives like that?"

Finally, unable to take the delaying any longer, Garth cleared his throat loudly and started reading from the book. Dean looked at the man with surprise for a moment until his words began to sink in. His eyes went from wide and questioning ("is his blood sugar too low or did he eat a Howler Monkey Dog?") to shrewd and pinched ("that does not sound good."). As Garth finished, the scrawny hunter sighed heavily and appeared on the verge of tears. He looked from one brother to the other, his distress was evident in posture and quivering bottom lip.

"Guys," Garth said hesitantly. "She goes after souls that belong to Hell. You said at the start you didn't think it was a coincidence she was in a house with spirits. Well, she's not. A house with spirits attracts hunters. In this case, both of you. Now, ask yourself, what's the likelihood she's still trolling for someone with a new contract to close when she's got one teed up and dangling in front of her right now?"

"What do you mean?" Dean asked then looked at Sam who did not sport an identical confused expression. "What does he mean? What am I missing?"

Carl grasped the dire expression from the scrawny hunter immediately. The revelation filled his eyes and drained the color from his face.

"She's latched onto one of you," Carl said, as everyone in the room looked in his direction.

"Logically, yes," Garth said apologetically. "You both were sprung from the furnace."

"Yeah, by an angel," Sam argued hotly.

He feared it would come to this. He wanted to argue it, needed to argue it, as fiercely as anything he had ever argued before because he knew, deep in his gut, who she was after. They'd been dragged down this road before and, despite all they had survived since then, he was not ready for them to take a second trip.

"We didn't renege on a deal," Sam said adamantly as his eyes burned with tears of fear and anger and indignation. "I got used as a vessel for Satan and threw myself in the cage. I wasn't under any contractual obligation to be there or stay there. My soul remained my own."

As he spoke, he knew he was making a losing case. He also knew he was just stalling as he did it. It was a pointless argument spat out just to fill the air and keep himself or Garth from saying the inevitable, the unthinkable, the devastating conclusion.

"I know that, Sam," Garth said heavily in a shaking voice as he turned his head and his eyes fell on Dean.

The elder Winchester recoiled slightly as the little hunter flung his arms around him and hugged him tightly while whispering soft words of consolation to Dean.

"Why is he clinging to me?" Dean asked, wincing under the pressure of the stringy arms. "Garth are you in heat or something? Stop it."

"This is awful," Garth whimpered as he squeezed Dean tighter. In response, Dean stood stock still and silently ordered himself not to pummel the little man.

"No," Sam shook his head too vigorously to hide his own fear. "No, Dean was rescued by an angel, by Castiel. Michael himself probably gave that order. That's gotta void the deal."

Dean pried Garth's stringy limbs off him and stepped back. The other hunter sniffled deeply and pet Dean's shoulder consolingly as he spoke in a hoarse voice.

"Unlike you, Dean made a crossroads deal, Sam," Garth reminded him then wiped tears from his eyes. Dean leaned back, still not participating the discussion as he looked from his brother to Garth with raised eyebrows.

"But that was then," Sam argued aggressively. "Crowley, the King of Hell himself, hasn't tried to send him back. Castiel and his garrison laid siege to Hell and pulled Dean's soul out. He's been free ever since."

"He's been out, walking among the living," Garth noted as he wiped his dripping nose on his sleeve. Dean grimaced at the act but still remained silent.

"They got what they wanted from him and have left him here," Sam growled. "They've never tried to pull him back."

"They threatened," Dean reminded him, his voice eerily calm and soft. "The diner in Illinois, just after I got back, remember?"

Sam met his eyes and saw the immense wall masking his emotions. He did recall that moment. The waitress in the diner did threaten to drag Dean back to Hell. The only reason she didn't was that she was under orders to leave him alone, to allow the little end of the world drama to play out. Since that time, there had been a regime change in Hell. As Sam stated, Crowley didn't try to take Dean back. Sure, he wanted both Winchester's dead, but that was just an occupational hazard when you hunted his kind for a living. Still, Sam didn't want to accept the obvious answer here, and Garth could see it in his eyes.

"Dean's soul was marked when it was sold, and even though it's his again, that mark is still there," Garth shook his head ruefully. "Demons can't act on it, but they can see it. Look, I meditate a lot, Sam. My Yogi has taught me well. Dean's soul is intact, but it is scarred—the scars are faded now, but they're still there—even he senses it." Dean offered a stony expression to the two men and said nothing. "Those marks don't harm his soul in anyway, but they would be a beacon to something like Mariette. His contract came due, but he's still here. She's a bounty hunter, like a supernatural Pinkerton Agent. They don't stop. Ever."

**oOoOoOo**


	7. Chapter 7

**oOoOoOo**

Carl's house rang with indignant voices, the leading one that of Sam, as they all processed Garth's information. Learning the wretched deal Dean made to save his brother years earlier was yet again hanging over them and threatening his life sent Sam's pulse through the roof. His eyes were wild, and his hair was mangled from the number of times he had raked his fingers through it. Dean, however, remained suspiciously silent while Sam and Garth debated this matter.

"A hellhound already came for Dean," Sam insisted yet again. "It killed him, and then he was resurrected."

"Thanks for the reminder," Dean offered, but his voice sounded detached and distant; it matched the faraway look in his eyes. "Good times."

"What I mean is, I watched it take him," Sam recalled with a shudder. "He's free from that deal now." (Sam heard his brother whisper in a thin voice attempting comfort: _It's okay, Sammy_.) "No, it's not okay, Dean. You paid, alright. You paid. Contract complete."

Garth again shook his head and offered his firmest and most reasonable voice to Sam, which took some doing because tears had begun to leak from the scrawny hunter's eyes. He didn't like it when the Winchester's fought and he could sense a blow up coming as Sam's nerves frayed and Dean looked to be on the verge of going catatonic (something that certainly wouldn't improve Sam's mood). Garth also hated being the bearer of this bad news. He certainly liked the Winchesters and considered them part of his posse (although a few weeks before he died, Bobby warned him to never say that to either of them; Bobby seemed to think the Winchester's preferred to be the leads in the posse and Garth their tag-along, but to Garth it was all just semantics). Either way, the thought of losing either of the Winchester's made him hurt. He gripped Dean's arm, but whether it was to give or receive support was not immediately obvious. Not that it lasted long. Dean yanked his arm away and threw off a warning glare that this was not a chick-flick moment.

"Dean's free," Sam insisted. "She can't have him."

"That's not how Mariette sees it, man," Garth shook his head slowly. "She doesn't know the history or see the fine print. Rule one of deep, dark voodoo doo-doo: Loa do not negotiate. There are no loopholes with them. Did you ever see the movie War Games?"

Sam looked at him in frustration for what seemed like a non sequitor until he spied Dean nodding. At first, Sam thought it was simply acknowledging the pop culture reference, but there was something more knowing and accepting in his brother's eyes that told Sam he was riding Garth's train of thought like he had a first class ticket.

"This kid breaks into a computer and starts a game because he found out the secret password was the creators dead son's name—Joshua," Garth explained. "The program doesn't realize that it has to turn itself off because it was only a game. See, that's not how the computer was programmed. It knew how to do one thing and one thing only: Fight a war to win. It takes over and nearly launches all the missiles, sparking World War III."

Sam shook his head and shrugged in a frustrated fashion. He offered Garth a lost expression on why a 1980s movie was relevant at that moment. He was not, however, surprised when his brother nodded as he grasped the hunter's meaning.

"Mariette is Joshua," Dean explained, following the allusion. Garth nodded quickly. "She doesn't know the game is technically over. She only knows what she was programmed to do: Win the game, or in this instance, drag the soul to Hell."

"So?" Sam barked. "This is not time of pop culture trivia. How do I stop her?"

"You?" Dean blinked hard. "Just you? All by yourself? What? You plan on doing all the heavy lifting this year? Sam, didn't you hear what Garth said? You can't kill a Loa, and they don't negotiate." He paused then spoke with a chilling finality that made Sam ache at his very core. "Game over."

"Or maybe not," Carl offered jumping into the discussion.

He sat at the table, listening to the discussion. All others in the room appeared startled to notice him there still. He looked back at them and shrugged.

"I was just thinking that in the movie, they made the game play tic-tac-toe," Carl added simply.

He quailed under their silence and varying levels of scrutiny. Sam appeared ready to dismiss him from the room. Dean chewed on his words. Garth's face brightened suddenly.

"What?" Carl remarked. "I loved that movie. I saw it when I was a in sophomore college, made me distrust computers." All continued to stare at him. "Look, my point is that you maybe you can beat this Mariette at her own game. They tricked the computer into learning that it couldn't win. Can't you do something like that with her?"

Sam scoffed and wheeled around to start pacing the room while trying desperately not to look at the hollow and haunted look in his brother's eyes. Dean stood suspiciously still staring distantly into the living room. Garth was muttering to himself, as if caught in some animated internal debate before his eyes snapped up and appeared dazzled by an apparent stroke of genius. He clapped his hands startling the others.

"Okay, first thing first: hide Dean," Garth said as he dove for his bag and looked over his shoulder at the older hunter. "You need a hex bag, now!"

"He's got a mojo bag," Sam said.

"He needs something stronger than that because she nearly found you," Garth said. "It's good you had that one-it's probably the only thing that's kept you alive so far. She's caught your scent, man, and tracked you this far—you can see her calling card on that wall. Let me give you mine."

Dean looked at him with a disbelieving expression, as if the scrawny hunter had just suggested they take a trip to the moon. Garth continued to rifle through his bag, laying items out on the table like a surgeon rushing to prep for trauma surgery. He finally pulled out a pouch a leathery material, supple to the touch.

"Major invisibility cloak with this one," Garth said as he handed it over.

"Thank you, Harry Potter," Dean grumbled then shirked back and turned his nose away. "This thing stinks like a dead cat."

"Oh, that's the skin," Garth nodded. "It must have gotten a little wet. And isn't not cat. It's a hedgehog. The pouch is one single little furry fellah turned inside out—not as easy to do as you'd think."

Dean grimaced and Sam offered a blank look. Carl, however, seemed uninterested in the bag or the smell emanating from him. Instead, he was trying to catch on all of the discussion so far. In the quiet, he looked at Dean with a puzzled expression.

"When they were saying you went to Hell, did they mean the place from Dante or the one in Norway?" Carl inquired.

"You don't really want to know," Dean shook his head.

**oOoOoOo**

Garth made a trip back to his car several blocks away and returned with several more bags, including a backpack on wheels that contained a series of books. He spread them out of the table and began reading from one of the thicker volumes. Sam moved toward other books, but Garth waved him off saying they would not help. He had the only one that mattered. What he needed Sam to do was get ready to deal with the bones of the children.

"Yeah, I'm certain they're in the coal bin," Sam explained. "When I went back earlier…"

"Wait," Dean interrupted him. "Did you say you went back?"

"Just to take a look at that basement again," Sam said. "There was only one area disturbed down there, near the old coal chute. I'm thinking it won't take much digging for me to find what's left of the bones. I can take care of them on my own without any trouble."

"No, you can't," Dean countered.

"Dean, the issue in the basement is the kids," Sam argued with frustration. "That's the easy job. We get rid of them first, and we will only have one issue to deal with: the Loa. Removing a spiritual generator like two ghosts in the house has to help diffuse her power somewhat. You know that."

"I'm not disagreeing it'll help," Dean disagreed. "I'm disagreeing that you're going back there alone. Sam, I got thrown down those friggin' stairs by who knows what when I had backup. Maybe it was kids, maybe not, but the point is we don't go solo unless there is no other choice."

"Oh, so the kamikaze/lone wolf approach is something only you can do?" Sam scoffed.

"I have a lot more experience hunting and hunting solo than you do," Dean reminded him. "You needed to be soulless to pull that off… or severely pissed at me. You're not either right now."

"Don't be so sure," Sam said through clenched teeth as he glared back. "Dean, I can handle this."

"You're not on you're A-game," Dean noted with a nod of certainty.

Dean looked at his brother skeptically. If he ignored the paleness, likely caused by worry over a cell phone being inadvertently turned off (oh and the blood spattered walls in the trashed living room and the fact his brother was about to die and go to Hell... again), he still did not look good. There was a drawn look to Sam's face and his eyes were cloudy. The coughing fits—the ones Sam tried to hide and failed each time—were becoming more frequent and sounded painful. Dean wasn't sure if it was a cold or something more, but either way, it supported his case that Sam wasn't up to dealing with this on his own. Of course, the determined look in his little brother's eyes told him nothing Dean said was going to sway him.

"Fine, go, but you take Garth," Dean said.

"Uh, no," Sam shook his head. "Garth is staying with you. He's working on how to deal with the Loa, and you need someone to watch your back, Dean."

"And you think Garth fits that bill?" Dean wondered. "Mr. Down-For-The-Count-With-A-Concussion-On-Every-Hunt ? Yeah, no thanks."

Sam regarded his brother with exasperation, but he did have a point. Garth's real skill was in his ability to research and not let any hunt get him down. He was a good man to lean on when you needed a moment to get your bearings or needed time to think things through, but his ability to actually watch your back or pull your ass from the fire needed some work. Still, Sam felt they were out of options.

"Desperate times," Sam said with finality. "This is a Loa on your ass, man."

"Yeah," Dean scoffed. "A free roaming vapor with me on her GPS. Awesome. She better at least be good looking."

"So we're agreed Garth stays with you," Sam cut in quickly and firmly.

Dean opened his mouth to disagree but could think of no better argument than '_no he won't_.' Figuring that would not win the day (and probably would lead to a 'duck season/rabbit season' style argument, which usually just pissed Sam off more), he clenched his jaws tight and massaged his aching ribs. He also felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, although whether that was just nerves due to the circumstance or because he could legitimately feel something in the room was debatable. Dean possessed no psychic abilities, but even basic, primal survival instincts would kick in when something big and nasty was breathing down your neck. Though he knew it would do no good, he casually looked over his shoulder and was satisfied to see nothing (and also a little unnerved by that). He wondered if Loa materialized and could be seen or even had a body to attack. Bodies usually meant vulnerabilities. One of John Winchester's lessons came back to him in that moment (okay, it was actually a Schwarzenegger movie quote but so what, the old man sold it) and it steadied his nerves: If it bleeds, you can kill it.

Still, Dean could not shake the idea that it was unwise to send Sam solo. They didn't know if the Loa or the ghosts killed Ana Crawford. They didn't know if it was for certain after Dean either. What if she got sick of looking and decided Sam was ripe for the picking? The solution to that problem struck him a moment later. The three of them would go together. That would allow Dean to watch his brother's back and set Sam's mind at ease that Dean had someone watching his own backside. He was about to suggest it when a second option was offered.

"Why don't I go with Sam?" Carl asked. "We got in and out the last time without any trouble. Dean, you and your friend can stay here, keep under the radar and all that, while Sam and I go deal with the basement tenants."

"No," Dean said quickly.

"Sure, I'll take Carl," Sam disagreed with his brother. "I won't be alone, so your objection is overruled."

Dean gnashed at the overruled comment. He wanted to snap back but couldn't. His brother had given up a chance for a real life to jump back into hunting. If he wanted to trot out douchey lawyer words, he'd just ignore it… for now.

"You know anything about ghosts?" Dean seethed as he turned aggressively to Carl.

"Not much, but I didn't know anything about revenant's when you and I attacked one in New Orleans," Carl shrugged. "Dean, this thing killed one of my neighbors; she was also one of my friends. I'm not letting it take up residence here to do that to someone else."

"Let me at least…," Dean began but was cut off by a swift dismissive wave of Sam's arms.

"No," he said. "Dean, you're staying here. We'll call if we find anything or need your help, but for now, all you're going to do is sit in this house and take it easy for a few hours."

"Actually," Garth cut in, "I think we need to do this all at once, Sam. I agree Dean should stay away from that house. We'll need to cast this spell at the spot where Mariette was summoned, which has the added benefit of being in the summoner's blood, right?""

Carl nodded. His crime scene techs had verified that the blood in the sigil at Ana's was in the homeowner's red juices.

"Good," Garth nodded. "Now, call me overly cautious, but keeping Dean as far from that spot while you do it just seems wise to me. So, order of operations: You burn the bones of those kids, so the Loa can't draw any power from them. Then you do this banishing ritual to send that nasty thing on its way. Now, Dean, it's your turn to bleed."

Sam walked with long strides to the table and picked up the book Garth had been reading. He read several pages and when he looked up, it was not with a relieved expression. He chewed his lip and turned a pensive expression to Garth.

"This only binds her," Sam said. "It doesn't banish her."

"I know," Garth said. "But there's another spell to banish a few other Loa in there and they seem to indicate that once she is bound, if you burn the original portal—the sigil that summoned her in the first place—it sends her back to NeverLand."

"But you don't know that works for her," Sam argued. "What if burning the sigil frees her? Did you read page 394? That one says burning the sigil once freed Baron Samedi."

"Well, there's a chance that could happen, too," Garth shrugged. "Keep in mind that's just one page, Sam. There are two others that say the opposite. That's good odds. Now, let me get a few things together for this spell."

**oOoOoOo**

Carl had departed to deal with his department for the afternoon. He promised he would return in an hour to be ready to accompany Sam on his excursions back into the house. While they waited, Sam paced the living room. Garth was in the backyard, burning a herbs that would be needed for the spell ingredients. Dean sat on the couch. He watched his younger brother wearing a hole on the floor and scoff loudly.

"You're not going to Hell," Sam shook his head. "You're not, but I don't think this plan is going to work. Burning the portal sigil? I'm not doing that. It's a bigger risk to burn it. I'll just do the binding spell and leave it on the wall."

"No, you're going to burn it," Dean said. "Sam, a choice between a rock and a hard place is still a choice. You can bind her, but there's no guarantee it'll hold. I can't live with knowing I've got a voodoo equivalent of a hellhound on my trail. I did that for a year once. I won't do it again."

"Then you can stay in the bunker," Sam said. "It's warded against everything supernatural."

"No," Dean said. "We do this all the way and send her ass back or the plan fails we set her free. End of discussion."

"Really?" Sam glared. "And if our places were switched, is that what you'd do?"

Sam's question hit the mark. Dean turned his eyes away and stared out the window, predictably silent for a moment.

"No, I wouldn't," Dean admitted after a long pause. "I wouldn't be able to risk you because… Because you are necessary, even more so because of the trials."

Sam blinked, surprised at his brother's honesty. He figured that boldness was a sign of how desperate this situation was. It also caused an extra stab of worry in his stomach. Dean's typical MO was to lie and protect Sam from awful or argumentative truths in an effort to spare him any additional worry. Breaking with his pattern was unexpected.

"O-okay," Sam stammered. "So then we're agreed. I'll bind her, and then I'll finish the trials. Once the door to Hell is shut, she can't do anything to you."

Dean shook his head firmly. He had lived for a year once knowing a hellhound was coming for him. He wouldn't live like that again—especially not knowing the date of his demise; that made everyday likely his last. Voodoo was rickety magic and never held—ever. Sam knew this and could read the objection in his brother's face.

"And how long is that going to take?" Dean asked. "Another month? A year? A decade? No voodoo binding spell will last that long. No, we do this all now. We send her ass back, or we set the bitch free. Either way, it's over tonight. My life. My choice, Sammy."

Garth entered the room at that moment carrying a smoking pot of burned herbs in some bright red-checked oven mitts. The smoke wafting off the concoction gave off an acrid odor and made their eyes water.

"Well, your track record with understanding the value of your life has a few blemishes in the decision making department," Sam argued. "Look, I'm thinking strategically. I'm not convinced burning the sigil will work."

"Yeah, neither am I, but we don't have a choice," Dean barked. "Sam, even if you bind her against taking me, she's still here. You know what that means? She'll go trolling for someone else. That is not an option! We don't leave these things behind to attack others just to save our own asses. That's not the job!"

The job. The damn job. Sam could hear their father's voice carving that, over and over again, into his little soldier, like Chinese water torture, until the mark was there permanently. Dean, the man who rebelled against Heaven's plan for him and who proclaimed a belief in free will was powerless to buck his father's masochistic lessons. Granted, those lessons and his adherence to them made Dean a tattered saint. He would lay down his life for anyone who deserved it (and more than a few who didn't). Sam admired that and loved him for it, but it also was one of his main issues with his older brother. Dean saw value in everyone else and never in himself. That pained Sam more than words could express, and no matter what Sam said or did, he could not teach or convince his brother of his own worth. He was the most valuable thing in Sam's life, more necessary than the air he breathed, but Dean just couldn't see that. Sam felt a tonnage of guilt over being a partial cause for this. After all, not even looking for Dean when he disappeared simply reinforced his older brother's feelings of worthlessness.

Worse of all, Sam knew his brother was right about what needed to happen with this case.

He looked down sullenly. Yes, Dean was right, the binding spell only kept Mariette away from Dean (since it was a blood spell using his blood, it would only protect him). But what were the chances that there were others who made a deal and had escaped the terms? Of course, there was a chance, Sam realized, that Mariette simply didn't care about deals coming due. If your soul was marked for hell, she might not wait until the expiration date. Sam knew the job, and he knew his brother's fanatically dedication to it. Leaving a Loa to roam and look for another victim was not an option. Sam felt chastised and guilty for wanting to slap supernatural cuffs on the Loa and ditch the island to bring his brother to the safety of their bunker in Lebanon, KS. He did consider Dean's objection, but he stood by his assertion that his brother should not pay because Loa were unable to understand nuances and because Ana Crawford messed with crap she didn't understand.

"You know," Garth said, listening to the discussion, "I was thinking, there may be another option if this one doesn't work."

Both brothers looked to him with hopeful but puzzled expressions. If there was another option, why was he just mentioning it now?

"It just came to me," Garth said. "Loa listen to the Barons. Well, some of the Barons are Reapers. If this doesn't work, we could summon one of those and see if that would help."

"What?" Both brothers said in unison.

"Summon a Reaper?" Sam continued. "Okay, and then what?"

"Simple," Garth replied. "Then Dean dies."

**oOoOoOo**

The explosion from Sam was loud and predictable. Dean folded his arms and leaned carefully on the kitchen counter, wearing a bored expression, while he let his brother rant and react to the suggestion.

"That's not an option," Sam insisted for the fourth time.

"Actually, it is," Garth asserted, trying to get himself to be heard and failing yet again, but Sam was losing some steam. Not that his argument was wavering, but his initial outburst was winding down.

"No, it's not," Sam said forcefully.

"It's not a good option, but it's _an_ option, Sam," Garth replied. "If Dean's soul is truly is free of his contract, then when it separates from his body, it will take the escalator to the Skymall. Mariette can't override an actual reaper... unless he's gone rogue, but the chances of one of those showing up is probably slim."

"In my case, less than slim, actually," Dean said with interest.

Sam heard his brother's tone shook his head vigorously.

"I know what you're thinking and no," he said firmly to Dean then turned to Garth again. "You said the Loa will drag him to Hell because of the contract. Now, you're saying she can't. Which is it?"

Dean nodded, meeting Garth's eyes with understanding. His face was still rigid with tension and a healthy dose of fear, but there as a light in his eyes that liked this latest option.

"She'll try, but Mariette won't be able to interfere if a reaper is there to usher me to the proper place," Dean said. Sam continued to offer him a resistant and stony expression. "Voodoo 101, college boy: A reaper trumps a Loa." He suddenly grinned in a relieved way. "You can ditch death sometimes, but you can't cheat it, Sammy."

"No," Sam shook his head vigorously, bothered yet again by the comfort that idea of his demise brought his brother. "Dean, no. If that was the case, then you wouldn't need to worry at all. The second Mariette tried to take your soul to Hell, a reaper would step in and stop her."

"That's exactly what will happen," Garth nodded.

"But Dean will still be just as dead," Sam seethed.

"Not necessarily," Garth offered.

"Dying and going with a reaper doesn't mean dead?" Sam scoffed. "Since when?"

"Hey, Bobby told me once about…," Garth began but was cut off by Sam as his temper flared.

"Bobby might have told you that Dean and I have done the revolving door to the hereafter before, but we don't have an angel riding shotgun with us right now," Sam shouted. "There's no one here to pull Dean back. Newsflash guys, Heaven is a mess and isn't doing us any favors anymore. Dean, you told me that the last time you spoke to Tessa, she was a little pissed at you. She's not going to cut you a break."

Garth cocked his head to the side and offered them a puzzled expression.

"Who is Tessa?" he asked.

"Oh," Dean offered with a grin. " A hot reaper chick. A little bitchy and cold, but still smokin'…"

"Dean, stop," Sam ordered. "Death himself told you to stop using your life like a yo-yo you can pull back from the brink. He's not going to allow it. Gone will mean gone this time. For good."

"He's too busy to deal with or care about little old me anymore," Dean said confidently—at least, he hoped it sounded confident because he was only like 80 percent sure on this. "I'm not anxious to piss the guy off again, and yeah, Tessa was not real pleased with me either, what chick is after you ditch 'em, huh? But I remember how this works. As long as my body is not beyond recovery, I don't actually have to die. I get a choice."

Sam scowled. He bit back a question, wondering what his brother would actually chose it if came down to it. Instead, he breathed heavily through his nose and grounded his teeth together, the muscles in his jaw bulged under the pressure.

"We can try this," Garth nodded. "We do this right, get a doctor here to let Dean go all Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense. He talks to the reaper, explains everything, and Mariette gets marching orders to go home."

"And Dean's still dead because he'll be talking to a reaper, Garth," Sam growled. "Don't you get it?" He turned and glared accusingly at his brother. "I know you don't. You said it yourself, you've slipped away from Tessa a few times. There's a reason she's the one who always comes for you, Dean. You know why, right?"

Dean grinned proudly and shrugged.

"She likes me," he said then stopped smiling as Sam's expression grew darker. "I'm the one who got away. Sam, this is a plan, okay? We do this right and not only does Mariette take my name out of her contact list, the bitch goes home. No one else is in danger. I get it. It's not a perfect plan, but…"

"Not perfect?" Sam seethed. "Dean, this is so far from perfect the word does not belong in the same time zone as this plan! In order to do this, we need to kill you. That is not an option."

"Whoa, I'm not talking about actually killing him, Sam," Garth interrupted. He chuckled at the absurdity. "No, it won't work the way we want if we do that. Dial it back a bit, mi amigo. We just need to dangle him a bit; sort of have him hover near death."

"Like after the accident or when I went to see Dr. Robert," Dean nodded, as if this made it somehow more reasonable.

"Put you in a limbo state so the reaper manifests before you die," Sam said showing he followed the thought but his voice and expression clearly said he still did not agree.

"Clear up this whole title of ownership snafu with my soul," Dean nodded.

"It will free Dean-and anyone else-from Mariette's pursuit and then we bring him back," Garth said. "No reason for you to try a binding spell or burn the sigil which, as you said, _might_ not return her to where she belongs."

Sam shook his head. Garth and Dean looked sold on the plan, but Sam heard nothing in the discussion that gave him any assurances.

"Unless we can't bring him back and then he dies," Sam pointed out coldly.

"Still, at least the reaper saves him from Hell," Garth pointed out. "So he has that going for him. Think of all the people you could hang out with again. If you see Ellen Harvelle, tell her I said Hi. She was always nice to me. Gave me Werther's candies even."

Dean nodded and smiled at the thought. The flash of grief and eagerness Sam saw in his brother's eyes made him shake his head vigorously. Thoughts like that were precisely why Sam feared this plan. The temptation for Dean to stay dead would be strong. He had more people he loved and missed in the beyond than he had among the living.

"I vote no on any plan where there is a chance that Dean remains dead," he said.

"When did we start voting?" Dean scoffed as he dismissed Sam's objection by turning away. He looked to Garth.

"How do we do this?" he asked.

"No!" Sam said wheeling in front of him and backed his brother him away from their fellow hunter. "Dean, this is crazy."

"Crazy has a lot of levels and doesn't often stop us, Sam," Dean observed with a grin, but the firmness in his eyes that flared Sam's anger.

"I'm not letting you," he said. "I'm not losing you again—possibly forever this time. No. I've lost enough. Mom, Jess, Dad, Bobby and now maybe you? No. You said you would be here with me for these trials. You swore to me, Dean. I'm holding you to that. Sorry if I sound like a broken record here, but the issue you seem to ignoring here is: What if you can't be brought back?"

"Then instead of kicking back with you and Garth, I'll be having a beer at the roadhouse with Bobby and Ash tonight," Dean said, his face expressionless, telling Sam he was done with the discussion.

"That is not funny," Sam growled. "Garth, get the spell ready. I'm packing the car and heading to Ana's house. We're going with my plan, and that's final."

He stormed from the room, slamming the front door with enough force to shake the dwelling. Garth whistled lowly and shrugged as he stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"You're lucky," Garth said.

"Lucky?" Dean repeated. "Garth, with this kind of luck, I'd rather be cursed. Come to think of it, I am."

"No, I mean, your brother," he explained. "It's nice he cares about you so much. I feel bad for him right now."

"You're about to kill me, but you feel bad for Sam?" Dean wondered.

"I'm just saying, he's worried is all," Garth shrugged. "I mean, despite what he just said, you're still going to do it aren't you?"

Dean looked at the hunter and nodded, glad the man was in synch with him. He was no Bobby, but Garth was an ally. An annoying, squirrely, and terminally dorky one, but an ally all the same.

"No choice," Dean replied. "You know someone who can help with the whole flatliners thing we need to do?"

Garth nodded. His friend, the one who loaned him the jeep, was on the island visiting his family—over in Oak Bluffs. He could run the medical side of the operation. Garth then asked, knowing the answer, if they were going to let Sam know their plan. Dean's dire and brooding expression was all the answer he needed.

**oOoOoOo**


	8. Chapter 8

**oOoOoOo**

Garth made a phone call as Sam packed supplies in the car. He took driveway salt from Carl's garage and his garden spade. He found a bottle of lighter fluid as well. Next stormed into the house, pointedly not looking at or speaking to Dean. His brother tried to speak to him several times, eventually whining his detested nickname (Sammy) in a sing-songy fashion from the spot where he lounged on the couch then began threatening to start making up limericks with it if baby brother continued to ignore him. Sam tossed an ugly look his way but said nothing. Instead, he focused on loading salt rounds into two guns and made sure he had plenty spares in case he and Carl needed to reload.

He was a bit nervous to be going on this mission with Carl. Dean trusted him so that gave Sam some confidence in the man until Sam reminded himself that Dean also trusted Benny. Who and what Dean trusted since his stint in purgatory was a bit shaky with Sam. Of course, his conscience reminded him, he once trusted Ruby (which had been a colossal mistake) and both he and Dean trusted Meg on occasion. Neither thought truly helped him, so Sam clenched his jaw at that and pushed the thoughts away.

Carl arrived into the silence of the house and said he was prepared to go. Sam nodded and gave Garth a sickly but commanding look. Dean groaned and rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm. Sam had offered to draw his brother's blood, but Dean insisted that Garth do it. It was a small gesture, not making his brother drain him, but Sam felt he should watch all the same. Garth pulled a needle, tube and glass container (sterile wasn't a necessity for the end of the process) and siphoned off a pint.

He handed the capped Bell jar to Sam, whose stomach turned as he could feel the heat of the liquid through the glass. The Winchester's had spilled countless amounts of blood in the pursuit of evil. They mopped up the mess and stitched then bandaged each other, but Sam was sickened by it always. He could deal with it. It wasn't a queasy or weak stomach that gave him the jitters. It was the idea that, yet again, they were expected to bleed, to weaken themselves to fight something stronger than they were even at the start.

Dean shrugged, the pain from his other injuries evident in his eyes as he did so. Sam found no words would form in his throat for a moment. He and his brother (and parents and too many friends) had given too much already. Though he felt the pain and the weakness in his own body brought on by the first trial, he was determined that the blood he held would be the last spilled by anyone for this case. He was again reminded that while he was leery of the next trials (and his confidence was ebbing in his ability to finish them) that this was something he had to do. Closing the gates of Hell forever would be his final penance. It would be the ultimate payback to all the evil sons-of-bitches who attacked his family (and all other families). He could do what his family had for generations, starting with the Campbell clan: protect the innocent. Once this case was over, he could finally, once and for all, protect his brother and repay him for doing the same for him since Sam was just an infant.

"I'll call you when it's done," Sam mumbled, his throat tight.

Dean nodded casually and quipped something about bringing back Chinese when he returned. Carl looked nervous but stalked out of the house, his shoulders hunching with the tension. Garth waved to Sam and promised he would stay with Dean. He waited until they heard the car pull out of the driveway before he turned to Dean with a dire expression.

"Sam's not going to be pleased that you're doing what he told you not to do," Garth said. "He'll be mad at me, too."

"He'll get over it," Dean said and snapped his fingers and pointed to the phone. "Summon Dr. Jekyll."

Garth nodded and sent a quick text message. His phone chirped a moment later and he nodded, indicating his friend was on the way.

"You trust this guy, right?" Dean asked, the first hints of worry seeping into his voice.

"Of course," Garth assured him. "We went to dental school together."

"Dental school?" Dean gaped. "What does he know about stopping a guy's heart?"

"Plenty, believe me," Garth nodded confidently as he raised his eyebrows knowingly. Dean glared at him. "How do you think he got thrown out of dental school the first place?"

"Garth!" Dean barked. "Let me rephrase: What does he know about starting a heart after it's stopped?"

"Relax, Dean," Garth assured him. "He'd already graduated from medical school by the time he went to dental school. He's a paramedic, part time, and has his own portable defibrillator. He uses it at parties sometimes when people want to… Um, actually, never mind about that. He hasn't had a single, um, incident with that in like two years so yeah, man, he's safe."

"Garth, so help me, if this guy…," Dean seethed.

The skinny hunter sighed and shook his head. He placed a reassuring hand on Dean's shoulder, giving it a confident squeeze.

"Would I steer you wrong?" he asked. "Dean, you're like family to me. I wouldn't kill my cousin, now would I?"

"Yeah, who would you marry then?" Dean scoffed then shook his head. "Sorry. Okay, if you say I can trust this guy, I'll trust you. Don't make me regret that."

"You won't," he nodded. "The last thing I want is to have Sam kick my ass because I killed you. That would make things very uncomfortable between us, if you know what I mean."

**oOoOoOo**

As Carl pulled the car into Ana's long, sweeping driveway, Sam looked at the house. He'd spent a lifetime in haunted dwellings. Old houses did not bother him, yet a sick sensation filled his stomach and a chill caressed his neck. He took a deep breath, figuring his own troubled thoughts were the cause, although the knowledge that he would soon be facing a Loa didn't hurt—particularly one wasn't the type you'd summoned to make a Mardi Gras party even better.

His thoughts were drawn back to Dean.

They'd never attended Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which suddenly seemed odd because it was certainly Dean's idea of fun. They talked about it for years—take a week off and hit the Big Easy to get lost in the madness, but something always intervened. They had been to New Orleans a few times, avoiding the French Quarter as primarily a tourist hangout that was no more New Orleans than Times Square was New York City. But Sam was beginning to feel pangs of regret about a lot of things he and his brother had never done but always said they would: See the Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC (Sam's idea); visit the Bunny Ranch in Carson City, Nevada (Dean's); see a Broadway show (Sam's); see the Star Trek Experience in Vegas (Dean's idea and now lost as it had closed and lost licensing). They were little things, things they discussed when days were slow and cases were not falling out of the sky or jumping out of shadows at them. They had fallen prey to the greatest lie of all, one they certainly should never have believed, that there would always be time.

As Sam got out of the car and slung his bag over his shoulder and gripped a sawed off shot gun filled with rock salt, he realized that yet again it appeared one (or both) of their days were on a countdown. Again. That was one lesson their father never taught them. John Winchester taught them to survive. To do the job and survive. They knew about death from an early age, but their own demise never entered as a serious possibility. They would be careful, watch each other's backs, but they always believed (especially when their father was around) that they would always have tomorrow. As they grew older, Sam created another lie for his universe: Dean would always be there.

But he knew now, from several experiences, that wasn't true. He was lucky, of course, that heaven, fate and (regrettably) a vampire had intervened to bring Dean back to him. And here Sam was this time, trying to do what he'd never been able to accomplish before: Be the one that saved his brother.

Carl looked at Sam with a critical eye. He heard the angst in the fight the brothers had at his place. He could read the lingering pain on Sam's face. His suffering was obvious. He felt for the younger hunter. As they entered the immense and darkened house, he offered up some information.

"You know when you first got here and I said I didn't know Dean had a brother?" Carl remarked, trying to lighten the mood and Sam's load.

Sam look at him oddly then nodded. The comment had stung at the time but did not exactly surprise him. Dean had been mad when Sam took off for Stanford—the first time he quit the family business and left his family behind. Not mentioning Sam was pretty much expected.

"You know I was busting his balls, right?" Carl asked, correcting Sam's thoughts.

"You were?" he replied.

"Hell yeah," Carl said. "Man, when we were in New Orleans, all Dean did was talk about you. I gave him a rash of shit about it, too, but also I remember thinking I wished my brothers were half as proud of me as he was of you. I mean, he called you a wussy college boy and all, but the look on his face did not match those words. He said you were freaky smart, got a free ride to Stanford—bragged about it like a parent who's kid is a certified genius. Hell, I don't think my own parents ever had that much pride in their face and voice when they praised me—and I was their favorite, the damn golden child in our family, but I got nothing on you when it comes to having a number one fan, Sam."

"Oh," Sam mumbled and entered the hushed house.

In 2005, Sam hadn't spoken with his brother in two years—since he met his then-girlfriend Jess, in fact. When she entered his life, it was like he had the final nudge to break all ties to his family. At first, he conveniently used the excuse of being a poor college student without a phone in his dorm room (and the very likelihood that he did not know where his brother might actually be on any given day). Later, when Sam's campus employment let him scrape together the funds to get a cell phone, he rationalized that he was on a restricted plan so he didn't want to waste his minutes calling his brother. What was there to say, anyway? It was harder to justify the fact he knew he would not have answered if his brother had called him. It was also difficult to take the moral high ground when he made sure not to let them have his cell number. He didn't doubt his father or brother could get it from the service provider, but that would mean extra effort on their part. Since Sam had left them following a huge fight just before his freshman year, there had been very little effort to communicate with him on their part as well.

"Yeah, so I had to listen to three weeks of Sammy stories," Carl continued as they paused in the main hall. "You two are lucky to be close like that. My brothers and I, we don't talk. Next time I'll probably see either of them will be whenever our mom dies. Sounds cold, I know, but that's how it is. Not you two, though. Hang on to that, man. It's something special, like the way he talks about your mom. You gotta hold tight to the stuff you hold dear, you know?"

Sam stopped and turned swiftly. He glanced back at Carl and blinked hard several times.

"Wait, he talked to you about our mother?" Sam asked, his offense evident. "Dean never talks about her. Like, ever. I basically need to threaten him with bodily harm, and follow through on the threat, to get anything out of him about his life before our father started hunting. He… hoards his memories. I mean, I get it, they're his, but..."

"It's easier to talk to a stranger sometimes," Carl shrugged. "No lingering judgment. No attachment. Of course, that's not why he doesn't tell you. I mean, he's not worried about you judging him. It's pretty obvious why he won't tell you."

Sam looked at him expectantly. The obviousness was lost on him.

"He does it to protect you," Carl said plainly.

Sam scoffed and started down the hall toward the basement a wave of anger washing through him. He knew there was no reason to be angry about this, not with everything else going on, but the information smarted. If he lost Dean, not only would he lose his brother—his only family and closest friend—he would also be losing his last link to Mary Winchester. Dean was the last living person on the planet who ever heard laugh or saw her smile. Losing Dean was too much because it was losing more than just his brother and best friend and partner. It was losing his entire family once and for all. That Dean had always withheld information, his memories, for years grinded on Sam even more in that instant.

He stomped hard on the stairs leading to the basement, shaking his head angrily.

"Protect me?" Sam scoffed, hating hearing Dean's number one excuse for nearly everything he did parroted at him yet again. "From what? Finding out she got mad because she had to change my diapers too often?"

"No, man," Carl followed quickly on his heels. "It's like you said: They're Dean's memories. I'm sure they're memories of a happier time, but it seems apparent to me that they hurt him 'cause he misses her, and he's not going to do something like that to you."

Sam reached the bottom and looked up at him oddly. Happy memories causing pain? Well, he could see how that might be the case for Dean. His brother had so very little in the world that made him happy: parents and family friends (now all deceased); music that was popular before he was born, a car that was made before their parents even met; the movie '_The Untouchables'_; and a brother who drove him insane. Most of those were things that could not love him back. Those things that could were nearly all taken from him, violently, in the end. For Dean, delving into his earliest childhood memories of those he loved was likely a reminder of the pain of loss.

"He's also afraid it'll make you feel worse if he tells you," Carl continued as he cautiously approached the coal bin. "I got the feeling, even when I first met him, that he doesn't peer into those parts of his memory too often because of how much it hurts him. Seems like maybe he figures it would be a worse pain for you because you don't have any of your own memories of her and the last time life was safe for your family."

Sam stared back at him with a gaping, innocent expression.

"That's why he won't tell me things?" Sam wondered.

It was simplistic in its fatalistic view; it was idiotic in its evident self-persecution; it was unreasonable in its refusal to see another point of view; and it was completely over the top in the protective category. The more Sam thought about it, it was basically a textbook definition of his brother.

"He's your big brother, isn't he?" Carl offered. "Sounds just stupid enough to be right, doesn't it?"

Sam nodded and fell silent.

**oOoOoOo**

Dean watched as the "Doctor" removed something that looked like the off-spring of a battery charger that mated with an air compressor from his bag. It looked like it belonged in a car repair shop rather than a living room, and certainly not something that would be used in an ER or for medical purposes. He cut his eyes at Garth, who smiled plainly as he nodded.

"Bill," Garth chuckled. "Did you make this yourself?"

Dean's eyes fell heavily on the hunter. Dean was no stranger to backroom surgery, less than qualified medical personnel and some very makeshift repair jobs to his body, but this was the first one that truly scared him. Even Dr. Robert came with the credentials that John Winchester had trusted the man a few times. This guy was another story.

"You MacGyver'ed a defibrillator, Bill?" Dean asked tensely.

"Call me Dr. Pullman," the short and chubby blond man said in a monotone. He refused to look at Dean as he spoke, directing his words instead to the floor.

"Yeah, Bill likes to be called Dr. Pullman," Garth explained. "Keeps people from confusing him with the actor of the same name."

Dean glared back at Garth. There was no way this man was ever mistaken for an actor. He might get mistaken by a dog for a fire hydrant, but there was no way anyone would think this squinty-eyed, stocky, doughy-faced mumbling middle-aged creature in the matching plaid pants and jacket was going to be thought of as anything other than an escaped mental patient. Paying the hard stare no attention, Garth moved the coffee table then pulled out a spray paint can. He folded back the rug next and started making an intricate drawing on the floor. The protective circle, Dean recognized, would offer only slight security from any visiting entity, but Garth merely shrugged.

"I figure she might be hanging around, waiting for the mojo bag to fail," the skinny hunter shrugged. "While Sam and Carl are booking Mariette's ticket home, she's still gotta be somewhere. Best if it's not too close to you. You'll need to talk with your lady reaper in private for a minute or two so hopefully this will help."

Dean nodded and smiled painfully. If this worked, he would explain the ruination of Carl's hardwood floor to him. If it didn't, Sam could. Rather than think on it longer, he turned his attention to the almost-a-doctor-and-definitely-not-an-actor named Bill Pullman. He instructed Dean through mumbled phrases to roll up his sleeve and lay on the floor. The hunter looked at his mad scientist with a queasy feeling in his stomach.

"If this doesn't work…," Dean began.

"I know, beat it out of town before Sam gets here," Garth nodded as the house suddenly began to shake.

"What?" Dean squawked, looking around warily. "No. Explain it to him. Why would you…? Oh crap…"

"You don't think if I got you killed he'll be a little angry?" Garth wondered loudly as the vibration increased. Bill whimpered slightly but continued focusing on getting his syringe ready. "I'm sure I can explain it to him eventually, but Sam's bound to be a little on the cranky side if we kill you for good tonight, Dean. I'm fairly sure of that."

"Then let's not do that," Dean said then stared in amazement as the protective circle suddenly began to visibly heat and bubble. The paint etchings buckled and then ran together as it liquified like it was being siphoned off the floor.

"Garth?" Dean said warily as the air in the room became electrified.

His skin tingled, and he felt his breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps. A sudden and inexplicable pain shot through his chest as though he had been stabbed in the back. The forced of it dropped him to his knees.

"She's here!" Garth said as he was flung (predictably) backward banging his head on the wall and putting out his lights.

Dean clenched his hands to his chest as his eyes fell on the bewildered and terrified doctor.

"Do it," Dean gasped as he back upon floor, writhing quickly in pain. The agony was so intense, he never felt the pinch of the needle in his arm as the world swiftly went black.

**oOoOoOo**

Once the kids in the basement were toasted like marshmallows, Sam began the ritual in the bedroom. He traced the sigil provided by Garth on the wall with Dean's blood. Sam swallowed his gorge as he did so, the thick, red substance coated his fingers and brought terrible thoughts tumbling into his head as he started to recite the incantation while Carl heated the herb bag in a crucible over the fireplace, waiting to douse it with blessed oil. Suddenly, a whirlwind started in the center of the room accompanied by a shriek so loud it made both of their ears nearly bleed. Just before Sam could complete his final phrasing, the wall got up close and personal, fast. He kissed the plaster as he was flung 10 feet in the air across the room and Carl was similarly tossed to the floor.

The smoke from the burning herb bag filled the room as sparks from the blaze spit from the hearth and started to catch on the rug, smoldering dangerously as both men struggled to their feet to complete their part of the spell. Sam coughed and hacked as he was again hit with a crushing blow, dropping him to his knees as he uttered the final syllables. On cue, Carl threw the rest of the oil onto the blazing bag and a blast of putrid air whipped through the room, like a gust from a passing semi, blasting everything in the room (chairs, end tables, lamps, dressers, bed and men) into the walls.

Then all was silence around them.

Carl shook his head and rubbed his eyes as the smoke grew thicker and the crackling sound from the embers in the fireplace grew louder.

"Sam?" he hacked as he crawled on his hands and knees to the dazed hunter. "Can you stand?"

Sam shook his head slowly to clear his vision and gain his bearings. His ears were ringing. His head was spinning and his arms and legs seemed to be connected to something other than his brain as he could not seem to make them move on command in the way he wanted. He felt someone roughly tugging at his sleeve and shouting his name.

"Dean?" he moaned.

"No, man," Carl said, shaking him urgently. "Get up! Sam, the house is on fire!"

**oOoOoOo**

Dean sat up slowly. He felt cold and there was a pit in his stomach that was unmistakable. The room looked 10 degrees off color and felt colder still. He could see Garth kneeling beside him, petting his hair in a revoltingly affectionate way that made Dean want to slap the guy, but he was stopped from taking any action by the voice that sounded in front of him.

"Wow," she said flatly in an angry tone. "Are you really this stupid?"

Dean smiled in spite of her biting and disapproving tone. He looked into her dark and passionless eyes as she folded her arms and glared down at him.

"Tessa," he began. "Look, I can explain."

"Yeah, this time, I don't want to hear it, Dean," she shook her head.

**oOoOoOo**

The house exploded into a fireball within a matter of minutes. Carl half dragged Sam down the stairs and out the front door as the flames chased them, licking at their heels and supercharging the air around them so each breath was like a boiling mouth of steam. They tumbled onto the front lawn as the smoke belched outward at them singeing their clothes and bits of their skin. Sam coughed and hacked as he gasped deep breaths of chilly night air while Carl crawled to his car to call for the fire department. Despite the temperatures, lightning flared in the sky and the clouds began rumbling. A sharp rain began falling.

"You okay?" Carl rasped at Sam, who stared mesmerized at the structure being devoured by heat. The roof hissed and threatened to blow off entirely as tongues of flame shot high into the night sky.

Sam nodded. It was done. The Loa was gone, the final blast in the room signaled that. The ghosts were gone—if his fire in the coal bin hadn't done the trick, the inferno in front of them certainly would (taking with it any other spirit that tagged along through Mariette's portal or any other who dwelled in the house but had gone undetected).

He felt good. He'd done it. He'd ended this case. He'd saved his brother. No suicide stunts. No half-baked ideas that hoped for a good outcome. Good, old-fashion hunting know-how—the stuff Dean was always telling Sam was the answer, the stuff their father and Bobby taught them. For once, Sam was glad his brother was a stickler for the basics. One salt-and-burn coupled with a basic blood spell, done. Add a little more fire than was probably necessary (Dean always overdid things with the lighter fluid, Sam felt) and voila: resolution and closure.

Sam struggled to his feet, prepared to thank Carl for his help when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out, expecting to hear a terse inquiry from his edgy brother, wanting an update, but the caller ID was obscured in another angry flash of lightning. Sam pushed the talk button expecting to get a gruff deluge of questions, but he got something else entirely.

"Sam?" Garth's panicked voice carried over the line. "Are you done?"

"Yeah," Sam said, his chest heaving as he regained his breath completely. "She's gone."

His ears were still ringing from the screaming of the Loa being banished and his head hurt from where it bounced off the wall once or twice when he was thrown, but over all, he felt good about this one. It was over, and there were no more casualties.

"You better get back to Carl's, like now," Garth said.

"Why?" Sam asked, his heart stuttering in his chest. "Is Dean okay?"

"Just get here," he said and disconnected.

Sam's legs went into motion instantly. He barked a command at Carl to hand him the keys to the car. The weary police chief protested briefly, but the look of determination and fear in Sam's eyes ended that quickly. He lofted the keys Sam's way. The rain began to drive at him, like nails aimed from the sky specifically at him. The wind lashed the car and battled the blaze in the house, but Sam did not notice or care. He tore down the driveway, narrowly missing the oncoming flood of cars from the volunteer fire department arriving to put out the conflagration. Sam didn't care if he ran one or all of them off the road as he floored the old Mercedes through the darkened streets. It was not lost on him that Garth sounded scared and even in the background of the call, Sam had not heard Dean's voice.

**oOoOoOo**


	9. Chapter 9

**oOoOoOo**

Sam threw open the door to Carl's house, embedding the doorknob in the drywall as he stormed inside. Garth met him at the threshold to the living room with his hands up in an attempt to plead for calm. Sam rushed past him as he saw his brother unconscious on the floor with a stranger hovering over him. A portable defibrillator and other medical supplies littered the protective circle that Sam noted with horror was broken in three places.

"Dean?" Sam shouted as he threw himself to his knees beside his brother. "Dean?"

"Sam, it happened fast," Garth started to explain.

"What did you do to him?" he shouted in return.

"Nothing, Sam," Garth said, backing up.

"Why is the circle broken?" he demanded.

"The house started shaking and then the circle like melted," Garth explaining rubbing his chin. "Then she was here, Mariette, and she threw me clean across the room. I woke up and…"

He gestured helplessly at Dean's slack form on the floor. His skin was a ghastly bluish gray, and there was no muscle tone evident in his body, as if he was comatose. The rise and fall of his chest could only be noticed if Sam placed his hand on his brother's sternum and leaned in close to feel the respiration, which he did with his own heart racing and trying to beat its way through his ribs.

"I did what I could," Bill said softly.

"Who are you?" Sam snarled angrily. "What did you do to him?"

"He tried to stop her," Garth said. "She was here and she was strong, Sam. She busted through the protective circle like it was made of tissue paper. She even torched my best mojo bag," he continued, nudging the odd tuft of what appeared to be burned paper on the floor, "which is why it smells like burned cats in here."

Sam glared at him, unconcerned by the pungent odor. All he could smell was the acrid fumes from his own brush with fire several minutes earlier at Ana's torched house.

"I took care of it," Sam said. "I had it under control. All he had to do was…"

Sam scowled as confusion and anger took over all rational thought. He looked back at his brother unconscious on the floor and shook him while shouting his name. When that had no discernible effect, he slapped Dean's face a few times, each strike getting harder and harder but gaining no reaction. Sam turned his eyes next to the strange man in too much plaid who knelt beside him listening to Dean's chest and looking grave.

"Who are you?" Sam demanded again.

"Sam, this Dr. Bill Pullman, like the actor only he's a kind of a real doctor and not at all an actor," Garth nodded helpfully, then Pullman whispered to him. "Oh, right, and legally he's required to say that he's actually not really a doctor anymore since they revoked is license, but he did go to school. So when you think of it, it's really only like a paperwork, red tape thing."

Sam glared. His furious expression demanded more answers, quickly.

"Mariette made a grab for Dean while you were summoning her," Garth continued. "She threw us all around the room, and the circle was broken. She got her gnarly clutches on Dean so Bill did the only thing that he could."

"Which was?" Sam asked.

"I killed him," Bill responded plainly.

Sam's chin dropped, and he felt rage burst in his chest as he tried to lunge forward from his kneeling position. If not for Garth stepping forward and placing himself in Sam's direct eye line, cutting off his view of the not-a-doctor, Sam felt certain he would throttle the Kevorkian-wanna-be before another word was spoken.

"Hey, Dean's not dead, man," Garth said quickly, bobbing is head side-to-side to get Sam's attention and force him to pay attention. "Okay? He's not dead. Well, not yet anyway."

"What's wrong with him?" Sam asked.

"The… bad thing that came here, she tried to stop his heart," Pullman said quietly. "That was supposed to be my job tonight so I did it first."

The fury in Sam's eyes was evident and nearly burned a hole in Gath's shirt. The scrawny hunter winced at the phantom pain and shrugged his apology and guilt.

"So then Bill got your brother's heart going again," Garth offered in an apologetic tone. "He's got a pulse, and he's breathing, Sam. Trust me."

"Trust you?" Sam roared. "I did trust you! You were here when we made this plan. I was going to take care of the Loa. You were just supposed to be here to watch Dean. You weren't supposed to let him pull this crap stunt! He was supposed to leave this to me! I was taking care of it, but no! You two decided to do the whole flatliners thing anyway!"

Garth shrugged and confessed.

"Well, in Dean's defense, he doesn't think a lot when it comes to protecting you," Garth said plainly and smiled understandingly. "Face it, Sam, a Loa is bad news. He figured you needed all the help you could get. Besides, it's a good thing Bill was here. Doing what he did, stopping Dean's heart like that, kept Mariette from killing him. She was going to rip his heart from his chest, and that would have been messy. Bad enough these floors need to be sanded. Imagine what a lot of blood would do to them?"

Sam glared. He didn't care about floors or how much damage was done to them. The only blood that mattered to him in that instant was his own rushing loudly in his ears as his heart pounded in anxiousness and rage.

"Now, just calm yourself, okay?" Garth counseled. "Dean's breathing on his own again. We just don't know why he isn't waking up yet."

Sam felt for a pulse in his brother's neck, satisfying himself that Garth was correct, and Dean's body was still alive. The throbbing in his neck was weak but regular. His breathing was slow and shallow, but it was steady. Sam tried waking his brother again. He pried back his eyelids. He shouted his name. He slapped him a few more times. He raked his knuckles roughly on Dean's sternum, but nothing would rouse him.

"Did you give him something else?" Sam asked anxiously. "Why isn't he waking?"

Garth swore the only things given were the drug to stop his heart and the adrenaline needed to restart it. The continued unconsciousness was a mystery to the hunter. However, the man with the syringes looked up and shook his head.

"I know why," Bill said and backed up into the wall with a terrified look. "Because she won't let him."

"She?" Sam asked whirling around wildly. "She who? Mariette? I just banished her. No one is here."

"Oh, right," Garth nodded and snapped his fingers. "I should have mentioned this. Bill here is also a psychic. He sees dead people, or spirits when they separate from the body, so I'm guessing that's what he means."

"Do you see Dean?" Sam asked. "Other than his body?"

Bill nodded his head then pointed to the couch: "There. Near his body."

"And?" Sam prodded. "Who else?"

"A woman," Bill said and shuddered. "But I don't think she's really a woman. She's not… natural."

**oOoOoOo**

Dean noted Sam had entered the room. His brother looked a little bedraggled with bright red patches like sunburn on his cheeks and his too-long locks of hair both wildly in disarray and damp as though he had walked through a sprinkler, but he was upright and talking. Well, yelling. From his expression, bitching was actually a better description. Dean shrugged. Sam's mood didn't seem all that important.

"So this was your genius plan?" Tessa remarked as Dean finished explaining what had happened. "You let that moron kill you knowing I have orders to drag you out of here for not obeying my boss's direct instruction to you to never do this again?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Dean shrugged. "Look, Tessa, I had no choice, okay?"

"Dean, that kind of excuse doesn't work on even the dumbest of parents dealing with a three-year-old," she shook her head. "You really think you're gonna fool me, about this? Because if you do, let me correct now: You won't. Get over here now. I'm taking you."

"No," he shook his head, stepping back.

"Dean, come with me, or I'll call my office to send someone else to talk to you who won't be nearly as pleasant," Tessa said.

Dean sighed, or thought he did. He wondered briefly if you really could sigh if you weren't breathing.

"Even for a reaper, you're one cold bitch, you know that?" Dean said. He stepped further from his body, feeling the swooping sensation like he was falling far and fast as he did so. The feeling was (unfortunately) quite familiar but never ceased to be unnerving. "You're right next to me. You can just finish me off, can't you?"

"Not exactly," she said. "You're not gone… yet. Heart and lungs are still working. I can take care of that if you like. This is the end of the line, Dean."

"Hold on," he said, feeling the room grow cold—something he should not be able to sense as he didn't actually have a body to feel the chill at that moment. "I can explain. Just shelve the bitchy Roma Downey act for a minute and hear me out."

"No," she shook her head and approached him.

Dean stepped back further. He saw more than he heard Sam pleading with him to wake up. Crawling back into his skin was what he needed to do, but some part of him was resisting moving back toward his body—mostly the part of him that wanted to keep a distance from Tessa as she stood blocking the easiest access to his form. He again pleaded his case and rationale for what had happened. The part where the Loa basically killed him played prominently in his telling.

"Right," she nodded. "That's very cute. And what's your next excuse going to be? The dog ate my homework? See, it's not really my concern how you got here. The point is that you are here. So am I. I have a job to do."

"No," Dean said. "Look, I know I've told you this before, but really, I mean it now. I can't go. Not now. Sammy, he needs me."

"You've told me that before," she said in her plain and unmoved way. "Maybe you should consider all the trouble staying on this side caused the last time you made that argument to me. Honestly, Dean, you think you had troubles before with the Apocalypse. Do you have any idea at all what is going on now? The mess that is out there waiting for you?"

Dean shrugged. The answer was no, not really. Not knowing the avalanche of crap steaming his way seemed to be a large part of his life. Finding out too late what to do to stop it seemed to take up the other part. What little was left was mostly costly mistakes that were his fault and could have been righted if he was just smarter or had done a better job. Not that he was prepared to admit that to his hot reaper.

"What, you mean that Cas screwed up Heaven and Crowley, dick that he is, made Hell worse," Dean shrugged. "Yeah, I think I got a text about that."

"Heaven is more of a mess than you realize, and you can't trust the people you think you must," she said. "It's like you didn't pay any attention to the field trip to your almost-past that you took not long ago."

Dean stared at her, waiting for more information but knowing none was likely coming. It seemed impossible she would know about his bizarre stint in Lawrence just the week prior, and yet this was Tessa; there did not seem to be much she didn't know about him. Of course, like Dean, she was a good soldier for her father, the horseman known as Death. She walked a fine line, but she did not cross it. She would only tell him what she was permitted and not a word more. Speaking in half-riddles that would baffle even Yoda was a nice talent that he wondered if she practiced or if it came naturally.

"You're saying someone upstairs put the whammy on me and sent my ass back there?" he wondered. "It was an accident."

"Angels are the agents of fate—accidents are their specialty, putting events in motion so they appear to be accidents," she replied. "The kind of spell that sent you back takes a lot of juice. Yet, isn't it amazing how with all that power and planning, you came to be in the one place in the whole universe that would protect you from it in that instant. Have you even thought to question why that was, or do you really think you suddenly became lucky?"

Dean stared at her for a long moment considering the possibilities but was certain he did not have enough information to begin to figure this out. Being half-dead certainly didn't help. Being completely dead most assuredly would not help.

"Either tell me straight up what you're talking about or move over," he said gesturing to his body.

"If you want details, that's a question better posed to Naomi," Tessa said.

"Who?" Dean asked.

"She's someone to worry about right now," Tessa said. "She could help or hinder you and your brother. It all depends on who you trust and when you trust them. Face it, Dean, you've lost your direction before in situations like this. What makes you think you've found it again? A prophet who reads an old stone tablet? Acts have consequences and trials have winner and losers. When a prosecutor locks up the murder, the victim is still dead. The wrongs are not righted just punished."

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"Just that after everything you've been through, what makes you think you ever knew what your true course should be in the first place?" Tessa asked.

Dean looked at her with a hurt but accepting expression. It was hard to be mad at her when she offered up truths, the ones that dwelled in his heart and his head, with such accuracy and apparent understanding. He wondered if it was that way with all reapers or just her. From the very start, she understood him better than any person he'd ever met. There was something seductive about her insight into him, something that always drew him to her.

"I saved people once," he said softly. "Now… What Sam is doing could save more, more than I ever could."

"You think it should be your job to do that?" Tessa ventured. "Since when do you have the monopoly on being the hero?"

"What?" Dean asked and shook his head. "No. It's not that. There are no heroes here. A hero would save everyone—including himself. We don't do that. We try, but we fail every friggin' time. So, no this trial thing isn't about the guy who does the saving. It's about all the people he saves. Sam, he's good at a lot of things. Hunting is one of them, but he could be doing more. Better things. Things that make him happy. These trials aren't doing that."

"Since when is his happiness your job?" she asked.

"Always," Dean said firmly.

"I never realized your brother was a demon," Tessa shrugged.

"What?" Dean snapped. "Sammy's not a demon."

"Well, the way you talk, it sounds like you've sold your soul to him so what's a girl supposed to think?" the reaper shrugged. "Dean, your life is yours. Your own happiness is your job. Sam's happiness is his job. Now, watching out for him, that's what family does, but his happiness is up to him. Have you ever truly asked yourself what would make you happy?"

Dean scoffed. Therapy from a reaper? Sure. Why not? He'd been to heaven, hell and purgatory. Now a reaper try to heal his psyche? Right. Not a chance.

"I can't have what would make me happy so it's not really worth considering," Dean offered flatly.

"You do realize that I can sense everything you feel, everything you hide from everyone, including Sam," she replied in her mellow and seductive tone as she drew close to him and placed her hand on his cheek. "Dean, I know what would heal you, what would make you happy, what would make all the pain go away for good. I know what you truly want—I've always known. I can give it to you, or rather I can take you to it."

"Where you can take me isn't real," Dean said, but the adamancy was missing from his tone.

"Ever wonder why your friends Ash and Pamela couldn't understand why you didn't like heaven?" Tessa asked. "It was because they made a choice to be there. That choice changes the whole experience, Dean. It becomes real when you let it. Hell was real to you, wasn't it? Do you recall what you said to me when I brought you there?"

Dean glared at her in shock and surprise as he shook his head. He had no recollection of seeing Tessa after the hellhound mauled him and tore out his heart. He felt the blinding pain of the beast's claws and then woke up suspended by chains with hooks punched through his flesh.

"The Hellhound took your life and claimed your soul," she said. "But it was my job to ferry you to Perdition. You looked at me just before I released you and said: 'This is real, isn't it?' You believed it, so it was. Now, we've been down this road a few times, you and me. Of all those times, that was the only time you've said that. You believed it was real, and that's the only way Alastair was able to break you. Let me let you in on a little secret: The same can go for heaven. When you believe it, it becomes real."

"Aren't you giving away the big surprise saying that's where I'm going?" he scoffed. "Way to ruin the last episode with the spoilers."

"You already know that's where you're going when you choose to let go," she informed him. "Once you make that choice, embrace it, you won't find it so stale. No more Memorex. No more CGI vibes. All real. All yours. And you know you they're all there waiting for you, to see you again. They miss you, Dean, as much as you miss them."

**oOoOoOo**

"A woman?" Garth repeated Bill's assessment. "You mean Dean's still on walkabout away from his body, and he's picked up a girl already? Wow, that is impressive, but it's kind of taking a chance."

"It's not exactly his choice," Bill said. "He's trying to keep away from her… but it's not working."

Sam looked at him with deep questions etched into his brow. Bill shrugged as he responded.

"They have history, I think," Bill offered. "Your brother has some attachment to her it seems. Old friends or old lovers? Very deep ties. Strong. He's trying to disagree with her. Unfortunately, it's not working."

"Her? Who? Who else is here?" Sam asked then paused scoffed and raked his hand roughly through his long locks as he looked around the room wildly. "Oh god, no. His heart stopped so he died technically. Damn it! Tessa? Tessa, are you here? Don't do this! Look, I know we're not supposed to do this kind of thing, and Dean's an idiot for not doing what we agreed, but you can't take him. That Loa had no business going after him, and you know it!"

"She's not listening to you," Bill shook his head quickly and swallowed hard.

"Leave him alone, Tessa!" Sam ordered the thin air. "I get it: He's the one that got away so he's unfinished business for you, but you need to walk away right now. You know that he came back that first time because that was his destiny and all that other crap we went through. It's not his time now either. Let him go!"

Garth saw the fear in Bill's eyes and sensed the desperation in Sam's voice. Dean's still unconscious form was also a pretty good incentive to take additional action. He clapped his hands then held out his palms.

"I say we take him to the hospital to see if they can snap him out of this," Garth suggested as he hurried toward the door.

His light footfalls carried the scrawny hunter down the hall and out the door to get the car running as Sam and Bill dragged Dean's limp body out of the house and into the car. Sam folded his long legs into the back and held onto his brother as Bill hopped into the front seat beside Garth. The drive to the hospital was brief and uneventful. Sam kept his fingers on his brother's jugular, feeling the slow and steady rhythm of his pulse. All the while, Sam kept speaking, softly but intently to Dean, ordering him to open his eyes, but the patient made no sign to show he heard.

Once in the hospital, Bill offered a believable lie about electrocution due to the storm that the sleepy ER attendants bought and took into consideration as they took possession of Dean. They whisked him down the hall into a triage area and left the trio outside to wait for answers. Garth dealt with paperwork as Sam paced and worried and tried to keep himself from kicking in the ER doors so he could demand more information. When 30 minutes ticked by without any updates, he was preparing to turn the place upside down but was relieved of that duty as a shrugging doctor appeared in the hallway.

What he said was unhelpful. Dean (or David Cassidy, per Garth's admittance information) was unconscious (which Sam knew); he had suffered some form of cardiac arrest (again, a known factor); and was being brought to a room for observation (not overly helpful). The treatment plan for the rest of the night was to play the waiting game. Sam was allowed to see Dean in his room.

He stood over his older brother's bed, listening to the quiet beep of the heart monitor. He loomed there, gripping the side railings with so much force that his forearms shook and his knuckles turned white as he fought off tears.

"She thinks she should hang onto him," Bill offered from the door way, startling Sam with his presence.

"She's still here?" Sam asked angrily glaring at the shadowy corners of the room.

It made sense Tessa was still around. Dean was still alive which meant he was tied to his body somehow so where he went, she went. The analogy of a dog chasing table scraps jumped to mind, but Sam cast it off quickly. His brother wasn't something he was willing to throw away so readily.

"She's not mad with him," Bill explained softly. "She… she thinks she's doing him a favor. She's trying to help him."

"No, she's not," Sam said hotly through clenched teeth. "She may sound like she is, she might even think that she is, but dragging him to the other side is not helping him. It's killing him. Can you hear what she is saying?"

"Some," Bill answered and closed his eyes, tilting his head toward voices only he could discern. "She's talking to him, giving him a choice. Something about desires or needs…. It's very… seductive, but not sexual. Does that make sense?"

Sam huffed and ran his frustrated and sore hands through his hair. Yes, it made sense. His brother had the oddest stable of friends. His preferred, non-related wingmen seemed to be a once-fallen angel and an allegedly-reformed vampire. It figured that the one woman he never fully dumped was a reaper with an unshakable interest in him. Sam only met Tessa once, but he recalled that (like a Loa) Tessa was not one for compromise or negotiation. She did not put up with Dean's antics and was completely impervious to his rakish charm. She also was the only creature in the universe who probably could talk him into surrendering to the abyss because, despite what she was, Dean trusted her, and she did have a hold on him (whether he liked to admit it or not). If she was making him offers, there was a chance Dean wouldn't be able to refuse.

"What is she offering him?" Sam asked quietly, dreading yet expecting the response.

"The chance to go see someone," Bill said in a trance like state. "Someone he wants to see very much. Someone he has wanted to see for a long time."

Bill quickly sobbed. Fat tears spilled from his eyes as he broke down. He pressed his back to the wall and slid down to the floor as grief, pain and exhaustion consumed him. He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked slightly as Sam stared. The mini-depression fit burned itself out after several minutes and Bill looked up sheepishly.

"Sorry," he sniffled, wiping his eyes. "Sometimes the feelings bleed through, and I can't help it. These are so raw and so strong… You've lost so much, both of you, and a lot of it is his fault."

"No, it's not," Sam said sullenly as he looked back at the bed and unmoving patient.

"He feels it is," Bill said unsteadily. "You're in pain. Your family and friends are gone." The man then seethed angrily and kicked his foot at the floor. "They canceled Dr. Sexy, MD!" Sam cocked an eyebrow at that, but let it slide as he considered it merely confirmation Bill was tapping into his brother and not some other stray patient in the vicinity. "Sam, I don't know how much time you have. He's tempted to go."

There were several people who Tessa could dangle in front of Dean that might make him jump into the abyss, but Sam knew there was truly only one that could tempt Dean to throw it all away and walk into the light for good. There was only one soul he had missed so very much and wanted to see more than any other, the one who left him physically but who still lived in his heart for every beat, the one whose picture he kept by his bedside still: their mother.

"Tessa, don't do this!" Sam said firmly as his voice cracked under the fear and the strain. "Even if you're not lying to him, stop this, now."

**oOoOoOo**

The room was quiet and Dean noted with only distant cares that it was no longer Carl's living room. The precise location was a mystery to him, but from the dim lighting and bland walls, he suspected it was a hospital. He vaguely sensed Sam was beside him, but he was not what was on Dean's mind in that moment.

"Who?" Dean asked, hoping but not daring to guess. "Who are you talking about?"

"Who do you think?" Tessa replied with a simple and inviting smile.

"Ash and Ellen and Jo?" he wondered and she nodded. Her expression beckoning him to keep going. "Pamela and Pastor Jim and Caleb? What about old Frank?"

"Frank Devereaux might be a little too tied up worrying the rest of heaven is spying on him, but he is there if you look very, very hard," the reaper remarked.

"Bobby?" Dean asked, feeling a tightness in his chest.

"I think there are others you want to see, need to see," she evaded. "Family with whom you have unfinished business, those things you carry inside you that cause you so much pain."

"Please do not say Samuel," Dean groaned and backed away from her angrily. "That bastard should be in…"

He stopped short of saying hell. His Grandfather Samuel might be a class-A prick and a worthless human being, but he didn't deserve the torture of hell. Dean knew what the man did. He knew why he did it. He didn't agree with it, but he understood the lengths someone who loved her might go to in order to see Mary Campbell Winchester again.

"You mean my parents?" he asked in a small and worried voice. "Ash looked, but he said he couldn't find either them."

"The angels were messing with your heaven the last time you were there, Dean," she said. "Zachariah wouldn't let you see them. They might have convinced you to disobey him, or more accurately, to keep disobeying him. If that had happened, he knew he could never convince you to say yes to Michael. There's a new regime upstairs now. All indications are, you would be left alone to enjoy your final reward."

Dean nodded. It sounded wonderfully enticing: believing what she was saying, agreeing to let go one last time, finally getting to see them again. He felt drawn to Tessa. It would be simple and painless. One quick embrace (possibly cop a feel in the process), and he'd be home again.

The pull to go there right in that instant was strong. Nearly irresistible.

**oOoOoOo**


	10. Chapter 10

**oOoOoOo**

Ghosts and monsters didn't scare Sam. Even the demon trials, although daunting and intimidating, did not individually scare him.

Only two things scared Sam Winchester: letting his brother down and losing him.

He had done both before and did not think he could face either again. He lost Dean to Hell on a deal brokered to save Sam's life. He fought hard to find a way to get Dean out of that deal and back once it came to fruition, but he failed, leaving his brother to suffer months of unspeakable torture that passed more like years in the pit and finally pushed Dean to become the torturer. Next, he lost Dean to Purgatory and failed him by not even trying to find him.

"Maybe this is the way it should be," Sam said dejectedly as he folded his hands under his chin and closed his eyes.

He was startled at hearing Garth respond to him from the other side of the hospital room. Sam looked up, unaware the hunter had returned following his departure an hour earlier with Bill.

"What do you mean?" Garth asked.

"Just that he's always putting himself in front of the bullet; throwing himself at the monster," Sam shook his head. "My whole life it's like he has a death wish."

Garth cocked his head to the side and blinked several times in confusion. He shook his head and offered Sam a puzzled expression.

"Dean doesn't have a death wish," Garth disagreed. "Now, I haven't known Dean my whole life like you have, but I've gotten to know him in the last couple years, and even before I met him, I heard about him from Bobby. One thing I am certain of is that Dean wants to live. He's just… he's prepared if he doesn't. Dying doesn't scare him the way…"

"The way it should?" Sam ventured. "Because he really doesn't care about himself or what him dying would do to anyone else?"

His brother's lack of care for his own wellbeing was one of Sam's persistent fears. The one bit of solace he had in thinking Dean was dead during the year he was in Purgatory was that at least it was over. There was no more wondering or waiting for that terrible day when Dean would push too hard, go too far, be just a quarter step slower than the monster and finally meet his end.

"No, that's not it at all," Garth shook his head vigorously. "He cares, Sam. He cares too much, I think. He cares for the people you both protect and save, and he cares about..."

"I wish he cared that much for himself," Sam said through clenched jaws as tears burned hot in the corners of his eyes.

"Only so much one man can do," Garth shrugged. "Only so much one heart can love. Dean's, maybe his is just all doled out to others so there isn't any left for him. It's not a bad thing."

"If you're the '_everyone else_,' it's not a bad thing," Sam grimaced. "If you're... I mean what about…

"You?" Garth offered with sympathetic eyes. "Sam, you know you come first with him, always. He loves you most of all. You're his baby brother. Without you, his life doesn't make any sense to him."

"Yeah, well, I don't know if I can take it much more of these suicidal stunts," Sam said in a shaky voice as he ground the heels of his hands into his tired eyes. "The reason I stepped up to do the trials and wouldn't let him is because he was going to do it and kill himself. This form of suicide was just…"

"Wait, suicide?" Garth interrupted. "Sam, Dean's not suicidal. Not even close. He's not trying to kill himself. I mean, well, yeah, okay, this time he was with the plan to draw out the Loa, but he sort of had to."

"No, he didn't," Sam snapped. "Garth, this is what he always does—takes stupid chances because he doesn't care if he makes it out alive. If he would have just trusted me, but instead, he did what he what he always does. He decided that he knew best and did whatever he wanted without any thought about the consequences."

"Seems to be a family trait," Garth said, placing his hand on Sam's shoulder comfortingly. "He felt like he had to do this, Sam. In the end, it was about saving his neck so he could stick around to protect you."

"I don't need my big brother protecting me!" Sam snarled. "I'm not a kid anymore. This baby brother crap is just that, crap. I'm an adult."

"But you're his kid brother," Garth explained. "Sam, that's never changing—you must know that by now. And trust you? Man, I thought Dean was the one with trust issues. He trusts you. He just can't help himself. He's hardwired to try and make your life better, easier."

"He usually does the opposite," Sam scoffed.

Garth shrugged and nodded.

"That's family, man," he said.

"If he cares about me so damn much..," Sam began.

"You don't doubt how much he cares for you," Garth countered. "You can doubt Dean sanity, his logic, and you should probably question his taste in music, but you can doubt never how much he cares for you."

"I spent my childhood and teen years trying to get away from all this," Sam sighed. "I ran away, whatever way I could. Actually striking out on my own or just burying myself in my schoolwork or fighting with my Dad to get distance. Now, when I'm finally here and ready to stay, it seems like Dean's always the one trying to leave."

He choked out the last sentence as his lids flooded with tears. He gripped Dean's hand tightly in both of his and held it under his chin. The unconscious man showed no sign of knowing Sam was there.

"He's not trying to leave you, Sam," Garth assured him. "He did what he did this time so he could stay." Sam turned a doubtful expression on him. Garth shrugged. "He did it to get rid of the Loa. Dying for good wasn't his goal. Your brother did it this way because he thought it was his only choice. This way, he had a chance of surviving. I know how it must look to you, but he's not trying to die for good, Sam. Dean did this so he can live and see you complete the trials."

"Do you have a brother, Garth?" he asked.

"No," the scrawny hunter shook his head. "I don't."

"Having one…," Sam shook his head. "It's not always easy."

He patted Sam soundly on the shoulder and sighed deeply.

"Maybe," he replied solemnly, "but take it from me, it's harder without one."

He remained quiet for a long moment, letting the words sink in as he considered the situation. Sam knew how to live without his brother. He didn't like it, but he could do it. There was always a hole in his heart, a place no one could get near because he locked it up and hid it, but that didn't mean he couldn't exist without Dean. He just knew he would always hurt and ache if he was truly gone. Facing the devastating chance of that outcome yet again, possibly for the final time, Sam quietly but adamantly pleaded with the ether.

"Tessa, you can't take him," Sam beseeched as he started shaking under the anguish. "Don't you do it. I'm begging you. Please."

The scrawny hunter suddenly blinked then nodded as he offered up a different solution.

"Sam," Garth said quickly, "you're talking to the wrong person."

"Tessa is like Dean's personal reaper, Garth," Sam explained. "They have this bond, like a sick sort of marriage vow. She's always the one who comes for him. She's… tied to him."

"No, I mean, she's not the one you should be talking to or yelling at right now," Garth advised. "Didn't you hear what Bill said? She's tempting Dean, which means this is still his choice. She can't make him go. You need to talk to him not her."

Garth drifted away, giving the Winchesters some privacy. Sam alone sat Dean's beside his brother's bed. Haunting memories of a hospital and a devastating diagnosis nearly a decade earlier following a car accident filled his mind. He pleaded with his brother then to stay with him, and here he was doing it yet again.

"Dean, man, don't do this," Sam said softly as he bowed his head with tears streamed down his face. "You promised me that you'd be here with me, see me through these trials. I can't do this without you."

He stared down at his brother, seeing no change in his expression and hearing none in the monitors. A sob tore up Sam's throat and nearly choked him. He again gripped Dean's hand tightly.

"I need my big brother to get through this," Sam said despite the grapefruit sized lump in his throat. "You can't leave me. Remember what you promised Dad? You said you'd look out for me."

He wiped his leaking eyes on his sleeve then bowed his head in crushing sorrow.

"I know I've spent most of my life telling you to stop, but I'm not doing that now," Sam said softly, barely able to even hear his own voice. "I need you, and I don't want you to go. Please, Dean. Stay. You gotta stay, Dean. Please. For me."

In that instant, the world rushed back at a dizzying speed for Dean. One moment he was standing on the other side of the room looking into Tessa's dark eyes and only faintly hearing the murmurs of Sam's voice. Then suddenly, there was an immense tug in his chest and Dean was yanked across the room and slammed backward as he found his eyes rolling and fluttering open as his breath got snagged in his throat. He coughed the choked for a moment.

"Sammy?" he rasped and turned glazed, bloodshot eyes on his little brother.

"Dean?" Sam gasped as he placed a palm on his slowly rising chest. "Hey. Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

"What happened?" he asked in a soft but tortured voice.

"I'll tell you about it later," Sam sighed as he pushed the call button to summon a nurse. "I need you to stay awake, okay? Just keep talking and keep your eyes open, alright?"

"You're so loud," he whispered, his head lolling off to the side as his eyes fluttered closed. "Just need a minute."

"Just stay with me, Dean," Sam begged.

**oOoOoOo**

Dean woke to a white room.

His first thought was he'd died and ended up stuck somewhere between Earth and heaven, where there was no color or definable sounds, like being in limbo… if it smelled like bleach.

His next thought was that he was in pain. This, he figured, was proof he was still alive. His memory of where he was and how he got there was a little hazy, but the aching in his ribs and head were strong enough that he didn't quite care about the little details like location. Of course, he also figured someone else could fill in those gaps as the light above the bed was blotted out by an large head sitting on even larger shoulders.

"You awake for real this time?" Sam asked and suddenly loomed over him. His long chestnut locks hanging lank and damp around his face.

"Drowned rat," Dean remarked in a soft, raspy voice.

His mouth felt dry and his throat scratchy, like he had swallowed a handful of sand. His eyelids ached, but not like they were bruised, more like someone had taken a potato peeler to them. His head was throbbing, which was not a new experience for him. A spot, just behind his left ear was the source of the pain he determined. The sensation of slamming his head on Carl's floor rushed back to him, making him dizzy for a moment.

"Figured you'd prefer not to wake up with your room smelling like a house fire," Sam remarked. "I ran back to the Carl's and showered after the doctor said your heart is as strong as your head is hard."

"Go team," Dean muttered quietly and gave a weak fist pump in the air.

Sam snorted at the response. He then sighed. Dean's color was better, still pale but not the deathly pale from when he was admitted the night before. More of a wan coloring that people get after a long winter inside or a tough bout with the flu. His eyes were still glassy and unfocused, but Sam knew that was the dregs of the meds they pumped into him. The doctor's ruled his "accidental shock" from an electrical surge caused by the storm had not seriously damaged his heart. The medical "experts" figured it had just jolted him badly enough to render him unconscious; the bump on his head did not help matters and made his sleeping beauty act last a bit longer. Sam let them live with their delusions. His mood was too light to care; his brother had made a choice, a conscious choice, to live, to say no to his reaper and to come back to his brother. Sam smiled each time he considered it.

"So why am I here if I'm not dying?" Dean asked, trying to sit up but instantly rethinking that choice as the room tipped and wobbled when he lifted his head. "There are rules, Sam. You remember the rules. No hospitals unless…"

"Well, I forgot them and you were unconscious so you couldn't remind me what they were," Sam interrupted while watching his brother sink back to the safety and stability of the starched white pillows behind him. "Of course, this is your second concussion in just over a week. Oh, just so you know, at some point, we're going to discuss why you had a crackpot doc on hand to restart your heart with what looks like a car battery set up created by MacGyver."

"Dude, MacGyver toys were cool," Dean offered.

"Your heart stopped heart for four minutes," Sam replied. "Add to that your broken wrist—two bones by the way—and two broken ribs and the doctor decided to observe you overnight."

"Is she good looking?" Dean wondered, satisfying Sam's concern about any scrambled memory issues.

"He's about 60 with hair growing out of his ears," Sam replied. "He's been in to check on you like 10 times this morning. I think you've got an admirer."

"Yeah, I'm friggin' fascinating," Dean grumbled. "What happened to Casper the bitchy god after she tried to punched my clock?"

Sam smirked and shook his head. No one could accuse his brother of false bravado; the look on his face was pure disgust. He had faced down a seriously pissed off demigod, nearly died in the process, helped solve a 100 year old double murder and haunting, but all he could comment on was that he got clipped in the final act and was mad at himself for it.

"She's gone and the house is a pile of cinders," Sam said. Dean's bleary gaze focused quickly. "It was a crazy night for the island, man. Rain storm turning into an ice storm. Meanwhile, (according to the reports) you got zapped when Carl's house was hit by lightning. Apparently, per Carl's report, in the same part of the storm, another strike zapped that old tube and cable wiring you saw in the basement at Ana's place. Burned it to the ground. Then, to make matters worse, someone screwed up so there was a little 'accident' with one of the town's salt trucks."

"What kind of accident?" Dean asked skeptically. His brother's grin was too intriguing for this not to be a good story.

"Apparently, one of their road crew guys got a message from their dispatchers to bring salt to the burned out house," he shrugged. "Something about worrying about ice on the driveway in case the fire trucks had to return. Carl said somehow the hydraulics malfunctioned so the whole load of rock salt got dumped into the hole that used to be the basement."

"You torched the whole friggin' house and buried the spot in a ton of salt?" Dean grinned and nodded then groaned. "Damn, I missed that."

"Sorry, man," Sam shrugged. "At least they'll never dig all of it out."

"Yeah, now, that is my kind of overkill," Dean nodded. "We should try that ourselves sometime—I mean, when I'm there to enjoy it."

"Right," Sam said. "We'll make sure we hunt primarily in areas that stockpile rock salt to make it easy and so you can have job satisfaction."

"Hey, a foot of snow fell in Kansas the other day," Dean said. "This global warming thing keeps up, there'll be a lot more places keeping rock salt around. Think maybe that'll cause business to slow down?"

Sam looked at him, wondering if the concussion was worse than he initially thought. Dean stared back and shrugged. Though not a psychic, his older brother seemed to read his thoughts.

"I'm just being an optimist, Sammy," Dean replied. "If I can't have my dinosaur, I'll dream of unlimited piles of rock salt all around. Okay?"

"Yeah, I'm getting the doctor in here to check you again," Sam smirked shook his head.

"Get him in here to check me out," Dean said, sitting up and putting his legs over the edge of the bed. "I'm ready to leave."

"Uh huh," Sam nodded and grabbed his shoulder to keep him from falling forward.

**oOoOoOo**

The trip back to the mainland was calmer ride than their arrival had been. The boys took the ferry as Carl was up to his ear in paperwork and reporters. The island was abuzz about the break in at the chief's house and the colossal fire that destroyed the crime scene of a grisly murder. All in all, the Winchester's considered, not a bad ending to the case. They arrived at the ferry dock and were greeted by Carl's cousin who had taken care of the Impala like it was his own child. It was recently washed and even waxed. Her sleek black paint gleamed in the morning light. Dean grinned appreciatively, stroking her smooth, flawless surface in greeting.

"Hey, back at the hospital, why were you talking about Kansas?" Sam wondered as he tossed his bag in the trunk.

"It's called planning and research," Dean replied. "We live there some of the time, and we're heading back that way. I watched the Weather channel, Dorothy. Saw that a freak storm dropped two feet from Topeka to Kansas City."

Dean paused and shook his head. A distant and uncertain look filled his eyes. It was a cross between contentment and sorrow. Sam knew the look and knew what caused it. Heeding Carl's intel, he proceeded carefully.

"There ever snow like that…," Sam began. "I mean, do you remember winter back there when you were a kid before it was just us and Dad?"

Dean blinked several times and sighed. Sam hung his head, figuring he should notch this up with all the other failures to pry Dean's lips loose, which was why he was shocked a moment later when his brother began to speak.

"Yeah, actually, I remember this one time," Dean said slamming down the trunk lid as he moved to the driver's door. "It was after my birthday—the year you were born. There was a huge storm. The whole town must have shut down because Dad stayed home from work even. Power went out. It got cold in the house. I remember Dad made us crash in the living room. Mom…"

He paused and swallowed hard. Her voice, still so clear, sounding in his ears. He grew quiet and leaned on the roof of the car, staring down at his hands. Sam allowed him his moment of silence before prodding him lightly.

"Dean, please," Sam pleaded. "I know you don't like to get all 'remember when,' but… I'd really like to know what you're remembering right now. I'm not saying you have to spill your guts or anything, but I don't have any memories of mom of my own. All I have is you and what you recall. You never talk about her, Dean. I know you remember her. I know you have other memories, and that Dad never wanted you to mention her, but that was Dad and you're not him… you're… better than that, stronger than he was. Look, I understand if you don't want to share, but if you do… I'd love to hear something of them… anything, actually."

Dean looked down, his lashes brushing the deep purple smudges under his weary eyes. He then looked up into the eager and beseeching hazel eyes of his brother. In that instant, he did not see Sam his nearly 30 year old brother. Instead, he saw a little boy, age five, giving him the sad puppy eyes asking his older brother why they didn't have a Mom like all the other kids did. A lump welled up in Dean's throat.

"Mom was worried we'd be stranded in the house," Dean recalled, a distant and wistful look in his eyes as he stared straight ahead while looking deep into his past. "You were still a couple months from being born and like I said, there was a hell of a storm. I guess Dad was worried about us freezing to death. It was making them both a little tense."

He laughed lightly. It wasn't funny, but the thought that at one point in his life, getting chilly in the house was his father's greatest fear seemed absurd. Sam, too, smiled at the possibility.

"They started fighting," Dean remembered. "Arguing, I mean. Yelling a lot, whatever. Anyway, mom sent me outside to play in the backyard for a while before the storm got too harsh. I mean, I didn't want to be inside with all the yelling anyway. Outside was… better, even with the cold, when they were yelling. Besides, what little kid doesn't like playing in the snow, right? Power must have gone out while I was out there because when she called me in they were taking out candles and flashlights; Dad had dragged a bunch of blankets into the living room."

"You camped out on the floor?" Sam wondered. They had often done so on Bobby's floor. He wondered if that experience made Dean prefer the bare hardwood to the couch.

"No, Dad had the floor," Dean smiled slightly. "Mom and I were on the couch. I guess you weren't taking up too much room yet so there was space for both of us. I remember she kept asking me if I was cold. Meanwhile, I was practically sweating like I had a fever. She had me cocooned in a bunch of blankets, wrapped up like a toddler burrito, and she was, you know, just… hanging on to me."

The memory amazingly fresh and alive to him. He could see her face and nearly feel her arms holding him, her cheek resting against his forehead as she snuggled with him and whispered assurances that everything was fine. He hadn't worried at the time. Both his parents were there, and he couldn't recall feeling happier or safer. Dean swallowed dryly and continued.

"The wind was so loud that night," he recalled. "It sounded like someone was screaming in the windows. I was a little… you know…"

"Scared?" Sam ventured. "You were just a kid, Dean. That's understandable."

"Whatever," Dean scoffed. "I remember that I woke up before both of them in the morning. Dad was, he was still sitting up, kind of leaning to the side on the couch. His head was resting against Mom's."

"You sat there and watched them?" Sam wondered.

"What am I, a teenage girl?" Dean scowled. "Hell no. I hauled ass out of there and went to my room. The house was warm again and the power was back on, man. I wanted to play with the racetrack I had just gotten for my birthday."

Sam nodded. It was so very Dean.

"Mom woke up first, I guess, and noticed I wasn't there," he recalled. "She must have called for me, but I didn't hear her. I had my door closed so I wouldn't wake them up. Next thing I knew, Dad was shouting for me and hauling ass up the stairs. I thought I was in trouble so I didn't answer him at first. Then I heard Mom downstairs doing the same thing."

"They woke up and their four-year-old was missing," Sam surmised. "I can see might be a little stressful."

"Yeah, I guess," he shrugged.

"Did you get in trouble?" Sam wondered.

"No," Dean shook his head. "I got pancakes—courtesy of Dad."

"Dad cooked something?" Sam guffawed. "Something that wasn't in a can or didn't go in a microwave?"

"Dad trying to cook from scratch, a friggin' miracle, right?" Dean grinned.

"Are you kidding?" Sam remarked. "I'm surprised it didn't end civilization as we know it."

"Guess he was trying to make up for whatever they were fighting about," Dean shook his head. "I remember staring at him there in the kitchen and looking at Mom, worried you know. She saw I was kind of weirded out too and she said…"

He paused while chewing on his lip, still hearing her voice clearly despite 30 years of absence. It was strange, he thought. There were times when he worried he might forget his father's voice. There were moments when he had to concentrate to even still hear the exact gravely croak of Bobby's growl, but his mother's voice always rang clean and clear in his memory.

"What did she say?" Sam asked, eager like a child seeking a piece of candy. "Dean? Please."

Sam had no real memory of her voice, not really. Sure, they'd done a DeLorean moment a few years back and met her before she was a mother and had a word or two with her spirit a few years before that, but it wasn't the same. Sam was an infant when she left them. Dean felt guilty, having these memories and hoarding them, hiding them, all for himself. It hurt to take them out and bring them into the light, but he could see Sam's yearning. It was stronger than Dean's pain. He curled his lips in a thin smile as he finished the story.

"She looked at Dad and started laughing as she said: John, I think seeing you cook scares Dean almost as much as it scares me," Dean chuckled. "He laughed at that pretty hard."

"Well, it was nice he made you both breakfast," Sam smiled in return, basking in the tiny shard of light shed on his family history.

"He didn't make us breakfast," Dean scoffed and shook his head. "He tried. He… failed."

"Failed?" Sam guffawed, joining his brother and grinning at something that wasn't actually hilarious but gave him a warm and giddy feeling, like unexpectedly seeing someone greatly loved and missed. "How did he fail?

"He burned the friggin' pancakes to like charcoal," Dean laughed. "They were like little, black, crispy hub cabs. Finally, Mom elbowed him away from the stove and took over, but you're right, he tried. You know, that's actually the day that they explained to me about you coming into the family."

"Yeah?" Sam wondered.

"Yeah," Dean answered. "They'd tried to break the news to me at Christmas apparently, but it didn't exactly sink in so during breakfast, they told me pointblank that I was going to have a little brother when summer rolled around."

"And you said what?" Sam inquired curiously.

"I said I what I really wanted were Froot Loops and a tree house," Dean recalled, nodding at the memory. Sam stared at him flatly, knowing he was not joking. "Mom laughed. Dad did, too, but mostly he shook his head and looked worried. They dropped the discussion and said they'd get back to me in a few months."

Sam's shoulders shook with mirth as he doubled over, laughing at the response. He believed every word and took no offense. A four-year-old was more interested in sweet things and playthings than a sibling. His brother's childhood honesty was cute and refreshing. He looked at Dean, despite the worry lines and the scars, something about his face retained that boyish air, even in his eyes, normally so haunted by a life of sacrifice.

With a sigh of contentment as his chuckles abated, Sam climbed into the passenger seat of the Impala as Dean slide behind the wheel.

"Sorry for the let down," Sam said.

"About what?" Dean asked.

"The Froot Loops and tree house thing," he shrugged. "Sorry for your loss there."

"Ah, you weren't such a bad substitute, Sammy," Dean said with a shrug. "I can find cereal in any store, and I can't take a tree house on a road trip or hustle pool with it. And you know what, come to think of it: You're obscenely tall and a complete freak—so you're like a treehouse Froot Loop combination anyway."

"Wow, you know how to make a guy feel loved, Dean," Sam smiled, holding his sides as the stitch from his laughter held firm.

"Alright, enough of this sharing," Dean said. "Keep it up any longer, and you'll sprout an ovary. Come on. Let's just get moving."

"Hey, you sure you're okay to drive?" Sam cautioned. "I can take the wheel for a bit. There's no need for us to rush. Dude, your heart stopped, and you nearly died yesterday."

"And I still look better than you," Dean laughed dryly and shook his head. "Seriously, Sammy, you look like crap. You need to get some sleep, dude. You're starting to look like an extra in The Walking Dead. Get some sleep. We'll be back at the bat cave in no time."

"What's got you so pumped to get back?" Sam asked, settling into the passenger seat. "You ready to admit you're tired of the road?"

"Actually, I was thinking we haven't explored all the rooms in our new awesome, secret bunker," Dean remarked, turning over the engine to summon the Impala's throaty growl. "All kinds of stuff in there, cool things that probably don't exist anywhere else anymore, which could mean…."

"There isn't a secret room with a dinosaur, Dean," Sam said firmly. "I'm sure of it. Your pet T-Rex is just a dream."

"You really know how to wreck a guy's hopes," Dean replied as he snapped on the radio to Boston's 'Peace of Mind' blared from the speakers. "You ready to head back to Kansas, Dorothy?"

Sam tilted his head to the side to spy a toothy grin on his brother's face, one to rival that of his beloved and MIA dinosaur hunting partner. The younger Winchester smirked in return.

"There's no place like home," Sam sighed settling back into his seat as the Impala tore into the gravel and began eating up the road.

-THE END

**oOoOoOo**

* * *

**A/N**: There may be two other stories in this series, but that's up in the air right now as I am devoting all my time to finishing my second novel. Publication is in a few months so I have a lot of polishing work to do.


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